John Baldwin Elementary School

JB is an excellent school community! My child attended here TK last year before enrolling in her home school for Kinder this year. The school provides plenty of opportunities for parent involvement which is a plus. The library is one of the school's many strengths. It had more volumes than one would expect in a typical ES school and the books are in excellent shape due to a patent-funded library book fund that is seperate from the Cougar Fund. Mrs. C is an outstanding teacher who did a commendable job of preparing our "special someone" for Kindergarten! The one negative is the out-of-control class sizes at this school and in SRV Unified as a whole.

Another year with JB. We are in our 5th year here and attended back-to-school night last night. No surprises, more spoiled teaching staff that pawns off their students for HOURS per day, between them being out for PE, "Wacky Wednesday", library, science, art, music, computer, etc., yet they can't stand "yard duty" as they require volunteers, they can't stuff envelopes, they rely upon volunteers to grade their papers and send books home, the whole thing is absurd. These are teachers that are paid twice the salary and very often it feels like they put in half the effort of any teacher in Concord, Oakland, or San Jose. We heard our new teacher say, "do you expect me to grade papers on Saturday?" out loud! Don't get me wrong, there are a few good ones, but they are few and far between.There are multiple "teacher shares" at different grade levels to appease the teachers. Having lived through this in the past, this is not ideal nor conducive to the great environment they are attempting to rebuild for these young children.

Worst school ever (former student now in high school) I constantly got in trouble even though I was the victim because most of the staff are extremely biased to kids they like and once they make up there mind they don't care what the other person has to say for example one time some kids were pushing me and after the 4th time I pushed back and the second I did the teachers took me to the office for causing problems and I told the principal and she said oh so is the teacher lying and I said no she probably just didn't see what happens that just made the principal mad and I got in trouble for defending myself the bottom line is that JB is a horrible school

We have enjoyed Baldwin for the past two years and look forward to another great year in 2014-2015. Our teachers have been kind, effective, hard-working, and very responsive. My children have had many opportunities to participate beyond just classroom learning. Breakfast Book Club, Math Olympiads, Intramural Sports, Online Newspaper, Debate, 3D Printer Class...to name just a few ;-). Most of these extra curricular activities are run by parent volunteers, for whom I am very grateful. I am proud of our school and devote myself to be a part of the Baldwin community.