Robert Down Elementary School

The principal, teachers and IT staff are useless. The Distance Learning rollout today was a complete joke, nothing works, the instructions are wrong and are way too complicated for a young child, the teachers don't know what they are doing, the principal doesn't know what he is doing, and the IT specialist for the school doesn't know what he is doing. Robert Down has earned an F-

Having moved around the country a lot, this is by far the best school my children have ever attended. It isn’t just a school, but a “community”. Everyone from the principal to the custodian and everyone in between is phenomenal.

The principal and teachers at Robert Down receive failing grades, as do the school district IT employees. While school districts in the Bay Area and throughout California rapidly adjusted to the Covid 19 outbreak by implementing well conceived, high functioning remote learning programs, Robert Down and the school district have completely floundered in their attempt to set up an online programs for students. The principal and school district keep sending out annoying emails with lots of useless rah-rah language. But what they have failed to do, every step of the way, is send emails which clearly and concisely state the steps the parents need to take to give their children access to the online learning programs, in a simple A, B, C, D format --- e.g., "Click on ****** in the upper left corner of the screen", etc, etc. Even when the parents figure out what steps to take to get into a particular program (no thanks to Principal Keller or the teachers) the online material often freezes up or runs slow. Our children are falling behind the children in other school districts. I am pulling our kids out of Robert Down at the end of the year and enrolling them in a private school that takes learning seriously.

My older daughter had 6 wonderful years at RHD. Great school with extraordinary teachers. Waiting for my younger one to start next year in Kindergarten.