Ivanhoe Elementary School

Ivanhoe is doing the best it can with limited resources from LAUSD through aggressive fundraising. My child progressed academically at this school, made friends, and was truly part of a community. The staff are passionate about their jobs and seem highly qualified and effective. There were two aspects of the school that need improvement. First, the aggressive fundraising made us, the parents, uncomfortable. Our first correspondence from the school was about the “suggested donation” to attend, which was way over our budget. We were approached many times over the year about donating, even after we gave what we could. Second, my child’s classroom was extremely overcrowded. It was unclear how much personal attention my child received from the teachers, though the school did their best to staff the classroom with revenues from fundraising. My child still thrived, but this school might not be a good environment for children who need more one-on-one attention.

My children have been at Ivanhoe for four years. Ivanhoe has tremendous parental involvement which allows the school to offer programs that other LAUSD schools can not. The staff is professional and dedicated. Ivanhoe is a good as it gets in a public school, but that is the problem. It is a public school and subject to public school budgets and policies. The class sizes are much too large at every grade. There are no programs for gifted kids. However, somehow the school can provide personal 'minders' to individual students with difficulties, which is wonderful to be sure. The problem is that with such huge class sizes, teachers can not spend any significant time with any particular student. My experience has been that the teachers, although very good, exhaust their time on a few students who require constant attention and to preparing children for standardized tests that the state requires. Our experience at Ivanhoe is sadly summed up by what both of my kids have said, "I feel invisible." And now in preparing for private school, we discovered that tests such as the ISEE show that they are far behind in comparison to kids across the country as a whole, but are above grade level according to the standards of the school. Ivanhoe does the very best it can and it certainly has a lot to offer but public education is broken, and try as they might, the staff and faculty at Ivanhoe and every other public school just does not have the resources or physical space to meet all the students' needs.

Our daughter is in 1st grade and we couldn't be happier. The teachers are incredible, the front office staff are so kind and amazing at their jobs. Ms Rescia is such an effective and caring principal. The parent community are so welcoming and we are especially seeing the love and compassion this week during the strike. We are so grateful for our community and school. We highly recommend Ivanhoe!

My son has been at Ivanhoe for the last 3 years. He is going into 5th grade now. Generally, we are very happy with this school, except for one thing. For the last two years my son has been bullied at school consistently and nothing is getting done about it. I have talked to his teachers and to the principal multiple times, and all I hear in response is "We will look into it" and nothing ever changes. Now my only hope is that 5th grade would be better because one of my son's bullies has graduated last year. Otherwise we are looking forward to moving on to a Middle School.