John Steinbeck Elementary School

3550 North Milburn Avenue

School District

Central Unified
Grade

K-6
Teacher/Student Ratio

1:21
Type

public

School Map for Central Unified School District

GreatSchools Rating

The school rating calculation is based on four ratings: the Student Progress Rating or Academic Progress Rating, College Readiness Rating, Equity Rating, and Test Score Rating each designed to show different facets of school success. Learn more about GreatSchools Ratings

Reviews

Submitted by parent on April 18, 2016

The school is unorganized. My child is in kinder and I honestly fear for her safety. The first few weeks I understand are rough. But months into the school year and it is still bad. Half the time the teacher doesn't even know where my child is. Ms. Spikes has horrible communication skills when it comes to talking with actual adults. I pray her communication with the kids is better. I've volunteered on a field trip and taken time to volunteer in the classroom and was so disappointed. There is no one on one attention to the kids. The parking here is horrible to. I do not have one good thing to say about this school. If you can go to another elementary school please do.
Submitted by parent on March 24, 2014

the school is very unorganized and there is no discipline for children at any time.every time I've been to the school the office is like a big zoo kids running everywhere with no respect for anybody.the worst part is you don't have to show identification or even be related to a child and the staff will let you take them.if you want to keep your child safe I would not recommend Steinbeck Elementary
Submitted by parent on January 03, 2014

This school is in progress. With the principal just having gotten used to her position but my son is a GATE child and he is put in a class with 10-12 GATE students and the rest are standard program children which wouldn't be a big deal if his class was small but there are over 30 kids in his class. My son is bored and always trying to find things to do. He need to do more practicing in writing but when he has finished his work and the rest of the class is still working there is no direction for him. I understand that it is hard with a large ESL portion of the school to provide above and beyond enrichment for the GATE kids but all the GATE kids will leave the school if the they do change the situation. When this happens of course overall scores will suffer. The balance is being lost at this school.
Submitted by parent on December 13, 2013

The school and the curriculum are better than I expected with a 5 out of 10 score on this site. My child does very well at the school. The main problems I see are that the teachers have too many students in one classroom. Some of the teachers can handle that big of a workload, and, understandably, some can't. The Principal is friendly and caring, and most of the support staff are really great. If this school had smaller classroom sizes, the scores would be higher. I've seen a teacher struggle to test a student while the other 31 children were working and getting loud. So many kids needed help with their assignment, but she couldn't help each and every child while also testing another child. At the very least, they could hire someone to do the testing so the teachers could keep their classrooms under control and help the kids that are struggling.
Submitted by parent on May 09, 2012

Teachers are not competent enough to deal with diversity. My kid's teacher is not able to handle the Kids. In fact, it appeared that she doesn't want parents to come and visit her classroom. We stopped volunteering as she started putting my kid in trouble without any reasons. Her classroom looks unorganized. Strange but true, she even told us that she cannot pay attention to each and every kid as she has a big class( 30 students). She is not well trained to even differentiate between bully and victim. My kid as a second language learner and being culturally different has faced bullying even in the presence of teachers. But no actions has been taken so far. In fact, one day, while playing, my kid accidently pushed another kid. For this, he got a disciplinary action referral letter from his teacher quoted bullying under which "physical aggression" was mentioned. Even the other teachers/staff think that she is impatient and doesn't have any quality of a good teacher. I just want this year to be over so that we can move our kid to Houghton Kearney/ Polk where the teachers are really good as well as the management. I feel that the school is in need of a good and responsible educators.
Submitted by parent on October 14, 2010

My son is in 5th grade has been there since 2nd and the teachers he's had have been wonderful!!!!