Zilker Elementary School

Excellent school! Teachers and staff are so caring, and are very experienced. They individualize leaning for each student. It's very diverse, and they are experts at social emotional learning. Both of my girls have thrived at zilker.

Not a safe environment for children who are on the autism spectrum.

Great science fair! I could see that the children really enjoyed expressing their thoughts. They showed remarkable confidence in the presentations (and passable science) A well run program! (by Science Fair judge)

There are lots of things that go into making a school great. I think the most important are having great kids and involved parents surrounded by a wonderful faculty who really care with a low turnover rate. Without those traits, no school is likely to excel. Zilker has them in abundance. There are also things that zilker has to work extra hard to overcome: overcrowded classes (with no aides), old and undersized facilities, constant budget cuts from the state and moderately inept administration. Luckily those things are not nearly as important and no amount of funding, small class size, or shiny new facilities could make up for an uninvolved community or disinterested faculty. Zilker has what really counts and manages to overcome all the rest. One metric that is not included in any rating is the number of transfer applications a school receives, that is the number of parents who don't live in zilker but apply to transfer their kids in anyway, zilker gets more than any other campus in AISD. So when it comes to AISD, particularly in the urban core, you will not do better than zilker. But good luck finding an affordable home in its district.