Mary Farmar Elementary School

My son attended MF for three years. We found that the quality of education is average. There are better schools across the bridge in Contra Costa County.

Stuffing 25 kids in a classroom where they can not get their academic needs met is wrong, especially when the teacher is making a salary of $85-95/yr. for 180 days of work per year (look it up on Transparent California...also look up the principal's salary, over $110k while kids are stuffed into classrooms. District superintendent...$200k). To compensate for ineffective classroom instruction, teachers send home mountains of homework to pass the work onto parents. Is this really okay w/ parents, whose property taxes are funding this ridiculousness? Our funding should go first to smaller classes, where kids can actually learn.

We have a grandson in Kindergarten 2014-15. He had an excellent teacher who gave him knowledge and experience in all parts of every subject. I helped in the classroom every afternoon, so I know how much the children learned. His homework was not excessive and after he got into a routine, he did it without complaints and still had plenty of playtime after school. Kudos to Mary Farmer.

We were here just for one year and, for the most part, were quite satisfied with the school. The one major frustration was the amount of homework given to kindergarten students. Our son had 16-20 pages of homework a week. He was in an after school program that helped with homework, but still had to do homework in the evening for 1-2 hours a night to complete it. He started off loving school and enjoying homework; however, he began to really hate the homework over time because of the amount. After moving away, we've really struggled to change this. He is able to do his homework, just has not overcome the dislike of it from kindergarten. It has improved as we've been at schools with better balance.