Selby Lane Elementary School

Sad to know that teachers don’t help children cope with anxieties after being a victim of a bully. Teachers not all but some need to feel more companionate about the kids.

My son is now in 4th grade Spanish Immersion. While Spanish is not his favorite subject he is still doing great. He is now also in the RWC Gate program. As a parent who volunteers as my time allows, I feel more connected to the school. All of the teachers are amazing! Each year the school needs to add 2 more teachers as the Spanish Immersion Program expands. This is it's 5th year and again, all of the teachers are great as well as the traditional Selby Lane teachers. Selby PTA is strong and puts on an annual Dia de los Ninos Celebration in the Spring. The after school coordinator and more, Mr. Zuniga has been an amazing asset to our school and has helped launch the schools Dia de los Muertos Celebration in the fall. As a Spanish Immersion student, my son is learning a second language as well as loving computer, garden, music for minors, library, Art in Action and once in Jr. High, he can participate in Rock Band and Student Council. I do wish we had more parent volunteers at Selby....but we are making activities like family movie night, game night, DDLN and DDLM happen with amazing success regardless of the number of volunteers we have.

They allow parents to request a teacher with their current teacher or administration. If you want a good class, make sure to find out which teacher is better or has more experience. That way you can get your child into the better classroom. Parents there call it advocating for their student. Make sure to ask for the classroom with the most parent volunteers. There will one class with 20 volunteers and the other with none. Talk to parents and teachers about how you can get into a better classroom. Otherwise you will be stuck in the classroom with no volunteers and problem students. They don’t allow all parents to request a teacher, so make sure to start early to get into the better classroom!

This school is not Adelante. The Spanish Immersion program tries to style itself like Adelante, but it is not. Adelante has many school wide activities for families prior to Kindergarten. Selby Lane has a welcome social only the day before school starts. Volunteering is not required. Selby Lane has a high teacher turnover. At the end of the 2015-16 school year, teachers from grades Kindergarten, 1st, and I think 2nd left. That is 3 out of 6 teachers. They try to make good reasons why they leave. But bottom line, if it is a good job, teachers will commute. It is indicative of the atmosphere. New teachers require more hours of training, and students are left with a substitute who is not required to follow lesson plans nor speak Spanish. In the Spring for the following school year, only some parents were allowed to request a teacher. This disrupts the natural order where you will have a natural distribution of students from various backgrounds. Pay close attention and ask to go to both classrooms of each grade level. You will see how they are highly uneven in makeup of the classrooms. Because the privileged students get the experienced teacher and get to select their teacher. This is obviously unfair practices. Student behavior varies extremely in the classroom. Most students do not read nor write at a high level. Look at the penmanship in the classrooms. At Literacy Night, I was told by many parents that they learned to read as adults, with their children. My student was at the highest reading level as a non-native speaker. Most students were at a low level, even though half the class were native speakers. I rated this school as a 1 because of the unfair practices, high teacher turnover, disorganization, and low academic performance. Look at their reading and math scores. This has nothing to do with reading in another language. If you tour this school and parking lot, look at the ground. There is trash everywhere. If you can, tour another school with higher ratings/scores/rankings. No trash. The littering here is shocking from both parents and students. The system there insures that bright students and involved parents leave the program. Only if you are in the "in" crowd with the PTA will you get the good teacher...maybe. They call it "advocating for their own student."