Ridgeview Elementary School

Academically, this school is very strong, your kids are going to receive an excellent education here. Unfortunately, some teachers are taking it too far, slamming your kids with hours of daily homework to "prepare them for junior high". No thank you, I'll wait till junior high to have hours of homework, it's not appropriate for a 4th or 5th grader. I've heard rumors that those teachers are being reigned in a little, so there's hope. My main issue with this school is that the overall tone is very bureaucratic. The kids spent the first ENTIRE day and parts of the first week doing nothing else but learning what the school rules are. If it takes this long, there's too many rules. There's also a red line that I dared to cross before school started to drop off something at the classroom where I was volunteering after I had signed in at the office and still got yelled at via loudspeakers - way to make parents feel welcome!! The 4th and 5th grade teachers are a mixed bunch, however, the 6th grade is fantastic. This was and probably will be the best year of school in my kids' lives. Packed with non-stop fun projects by caring teachers who are super motivated. Special shout out to Mrs. and Mr. Kinloch who are dedicating weeks of their free time to the amazing eco-lab. This program could be easily rolled out to the other grades, but the 4th & 5th teachers have declined, reaffirming my opinion that they are just not as motivated. If you're coming in from another district, let me assure you that I'm being very nitpicky here, spoiled from having kids attend some of the A++ schools in districts here, so this school is still an A compared to other districts. To my knowledge, no major issues with bullies in recent years, those mentioned in other reviews have apparently aged out.

On paper, Ridgeview seems strong academically. Whether this is due to the teaching or to the demographic of families attending the school is up in the air. Many students are from successful families that get the type of support at home that breeds success regardless of the environment. This puts schools like Ridgeview at an advantage when compared to other schools' STAR scores. Our experiences with the teachers have been very mixed. If you have a child that is at risk of being bullied, avoid at all costs.

We moved to Granite Bay because of the quality of the public schools here. We have been here a year now, with two children in the system, and we are more than delighted we moved here. We had our children in private schools prior to moving here. Unfortunately, the private school could offer no assistance to one of our children that needed special help in school. The Resource Department at Ridgeview is excellent. Our children are excelling like never before. I thought I would speak to the one star review below. I think this parent was unnecessarily frustrated when leaving this review. (it happens to the best of us) In fact, it is well-publicized that families can learn the name of their teacher early two days before school starts. This is a special event and fundraiser at school. The evening after this event occurs, families can find their child's teacher posted on campus. There is no need to take off work to find out your child's class or teacher. Communication from the school is actually very good. We receive frequent emails from the district, from the school principle, and from the Parent/Teacher association. This is also true during summer vacation.

Once again Eureaka Union is showing us how little they really care about families that don't fit the area perfect ideals. After repeated inquiries about finding out who my sons teacher is going to be or what classroom he will need to go to, an email is sent out two nights before school starts letting the parents know that we have to get time off of work the next day in order to get this information before school starts?