Mariemont Elementary School

Mariemont is a great school with excellent parent involvement, great teachers, principal and staff.

We have had the best experience with our son attending Mariemont. I am looking forward to my daughter entering Kindergarten in a couple of years.

Our child has gone to school here for kindergarten through 5th grade. I cannot say enough nice things about Principal Wahl and the teachers we've had over the years. A lot of the teachers- and our principal- live in the neighborhood, and have an invested interest in the success of the children. The PTA is very active and is amazing at fundraising- but it is not required to participate. Parent involvement is never lacking either- again, not that it's required, they never seem to have a shortage of parents who want to help. There are several activities to get your child involved- chess club, choir, band, theater, even a Lego club. There is also a before/after school program right on campus to help out the parents that work (Discovery Club).

We chose Mariemont after two years of researching schools in our district as well as San Juan Unified. We decided to transfer districts to get into Mariemont due to its reputation and two really great visits to the school campus. The school campus is really nice and comfortable, the staff was also nice and the school has a large amount of participation from parents. Kindergarten turned out to be a total wasted year. Our class was always in a state of chaos. The teacher could not control the class and a few kids that were acting out. She was constantly handing out punishment to those kids and giving all of her attention on those few kids. I could see early signs that my kid was losing interest in school. At the end of the year we spoke with the principal and discussed our issues. We had hoped that we just had a bad year and 1st grade things would get better. We got a new teacher and she seemed more than capable to handle the smaller group of 1st graders. After just a few months of first grade, I could see more signs that my kid was clearly sinking into a deeper depression. Hated going to school now and was also having some small playground bullying issues too. It appeared to me that the main issue was in the classroom instruction. Boredom and loss of interest at school evident and had nothing good to say about the school day over dinner. It was obvious to see at home for us with only one kid that up until now was super interested in learning and highly motivated and doing very well all the way along. So I started doing research on the classroom curriculum which I wish I had done before enrolling. What I found out about the new Common Core State Standards curriculum was pretty eye opening and now I could see why my kid was having problems. I won’t get into all the problems with the Federal Government’s public school education changes because there are so many problems with it to try and list here. I can tell you this; it was not what we wanted for our child and I could see that waiting for it to get fixed by government officials or school staff would probably never happen and if it did it would probably be too late. I’m sad that we had to leave what could have been a great environment at Mariemont but since we left half way through the school year my child’s confidence and interest in school has changed drastically so I know we made the right move.