William Brooks Elementary School

There is a great sense of community and pride at Brooks. Great teachers, challenging but reasonable curriculum, strong PTA, large campus for kids to enjoy and many fun events.

All three of my children have attended a Brooks. They have had wonderful experiences and were beyond prepared for middle school.

My son was in private school prior to attending Brooks. I had a number of concerns about transferring him to public school. Those fears were unfounded. The great private education my son was receiving had him about a year behind the kids at Brooks. The staff and teachers quickly rectified that. Within a year he had caught up with his peers. He had a very successful transfer to Rolling Hills Middle School which was equally as great. He is now a sophomore at Oak Ridge High School and actively planning his college career. He is active in the community and is a superior athlete. Brooks was the best move we ever made!

The major problem with this, and probably every other school in California, is the class size. They jam 30+ kids in a classroom, and due to job cutbacks many of the teaching jobs are job shares between two teachers, each teaching part of the week. So if your kid isn't quiet and conforming, they become a 'problem', because one teacher working part time simply can't handle that many kids and do much more than classroom management. Two or three kids that make noise or distract the class and its over, and there will always be 2-3 kids like that in every class. But the principal says she has a study that says huge classes are okay, despite 40 years of real studies that say otherwise. I guess when we waste our money on pork, we have to come up with some kind of explanation for short changing the next generations' education. So don't feel bad if you end up having lots and lots of meetings with school officials about your perfectly normal child. It just means they're unable to handle their classrooms and would rather that all be your problem instead of theirs.