Pinole Valley High School

2900 Pinole Valley Road

School District

West Contra Costa Unified
Grade

9-12
Teacher/Student Ratio

1:24
Type

public

School Map for West Contra Costa 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 student on December 05, 2024

This school was doomed from the beginning. The teachers don't know how to teach and can't canter to students needs. The kids there are horrible and the school is disgusting. Always having a rat or bug infestation. There's also mold growing inside the walls that you can sometimes smell. None of the staff take anything seriously and should not have a job in administration.
Submitted by parent on August 22, 2024

Ever since the new principal has been added in, everything has gone wrong. For one, the school is terrible at relaying information. Why? I’m not sure. They seem to just not care about their students. Their mindset seems to be “if you didn’t know about this extracurricular and now it’s too late to start, too bad!”, bring the old principal back or replace this one.
Submitted by parent on August 10, 2022

This school was marginal before Covid. Now after it has subsided, it is much worse. Many teachers left or constantly call in sick so my son had different substitute teachers nearly every day. They use several different computer based teaching platforms like Power Schools, Google Classrooms and others so you need to have a fistful of logins and knowledge of how to navigate each of the individual platforms to understand what your child's assignments are and what has or has not been completed. Some teachers updated things fairly quickly others rarely updated them at all. Most assignments were done through these platforms so as a parent you have little chance to help your child if they are struggling with a subject. It mostly turned into guess the answer, guess the answer again and it you get it wrong it skips to the next questions leaving the lack of understanding in place with no chance to teach or help them comprehend. My son had lots of assignments that were 100% completed that he only got a small percentage of the questions correct because guessing quickly to get through it was the preferred method, yet to me the assignment looked completed. The teachers seemed to not be interested in teaching and use every possible Covid excuse to be absent from the school. There is not an environment where learning and education are shown to be important and worth working for. Rather the teachers response to Covid was to demonstrate that they just didn't care about teaching and education wasn't worth the effort. That is what my kids learned in the 2 years they attended util we moved to get them into a better school. Councilors were difficult to reach and didn't seem to care about anything. Formulaic, boiler plate responses were all you got if they responded at all. There were a few good teachers but they were in a sea of mediocrity. Add to that there was a lot of violence and fighting at the school. It was not a safe place that fostered learning. We could see clearly that our kids would not be successful if we stayed in this school. Leaving was the only choice we had.
Submitted by student on June 20, 2021

I notice that everyone's review is like really old. So here is a new updated review. Pinole Valley is one of the BEST schools there can be. I used to live in SF and let me tell you school over their are just HORRIBLE. more horrible than Pinole Valley. Pinole Valley is a very opportunistic school. many scholarship offers and many programs that can help your child. For the students.... well let's get real. You will always find rude student in any school like come on people. The teachers are also very good teachers. We don't know how hard it is to be a teacher or to become a teacher. The only reason why your child says that the teachers here are bad is because they don't actually know how to do there job. The students job is to work hard and to be respectful. Students say that they turn in work but never gets graded...well that's not true because they do grade it. teachers have 215 students so imagine if you had to handle 215 students? Think you can handle it? That's why it's hard to be a teacher, it just takes a while for the teachers to grade every single students work. Students are also very disrespectful to teachers as well. I say DON'T GIVE YOUR CHILD A PHONE!!! Because if you give a phone to your child it WILL BE a distraction and make your child fail the class BLAMING the teacher that they didn't do there job correctly. Who is the professional here, your child, you or the Teachers? The teachers! So if your child says that a teacher is rude, check if your child is being respectful to the teacher or is even doing there job. For the mess at school. Pinole Valley is one of the cleanest schools I have been to. We have wonderful janitors who stay after school and stay late just cleaning the school. Parents if you don;'t show your child how to be clean they they will be the ones making the mess at school and complain that it's not clean. Remember parents you teaching your child how to be respectful, open minded, and how to be clean reflects on your child. the way you act reflects on your child. So think twice before reading the other reviews.
Submitted by parent on April 21, 2021

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Submitted by student on January 10, 2016

At this school, I find the prevalence of students disinterested in their own education shocking. Worse yet, some of these students disrupt the education of their fellow classmates by creating disturbances in the classroom and ridiculing the students that care about their education. Rather than being celebrated, the students that listen to the teacher, do the assigned work, and actually attempt to further their education are mocked. However, the staff and AP students help to redeem the school's status, as both groups tend to be friendlier and are concerned about education and grades. In addition, the school and district both make commendable efforts to get students to be more engaged in the community and promote interest in learning, although the majority still do not participate, instead allowing the select few who do to get massive opportunities to stand out. Overall, I think this school could use some major improvements, although the fault lies more within the students than the school.
Submitted by other on January 02, 2014

this school is so disgusting like everywhere it is completely filthy especially the bathrooms and the students here just run the school its really horrible they have no absolute respect for authority or anyone in general! there are only a few decent teachers here, some are completely unfair or have no idea what they are teaching, and they do not know how to control a class or simply do not care! i've only learned in my geometry class this year, the rest are just a waste of my time. i have to go to this school for another 3 years to slowly watch my education plummet, don't make the mistake of sending your child here.
Submitted by other on August 31, 2013

My school is Pinole Valley Highschool, in Pinole,CA 94564. I like this school a lot. It is very known for the clubs, activities, and sports. We have lots of diversity!
Submitted by parent on February 06, 2013

I brought my daughter to enroll with Mrs. Yost and she made our experience very pleasureable! She was very calm and knew her job very well. I don't understand why ANYONE would complain about this very nice lady, she does her job very well. Maybe others should speak to her in a calm and nice way, or get enough sleep so they aren't so cranky.