Alvarado Elementary School

625 Douglass Street

School District

San Francisco Unified
Grade

K-5
Teacher/Student Ratio

1:14
Type

public

School Map for San Francisco 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 October 21, 2022

Wonderful school in Noe Valley neighborhood. Engaged parents who help put on many events. Great, warm, but no nonsense Principal. Teachers seem to work together collaboratively. My son is excited to go to school every day and is learning a ton! If you are searching for a school, add Alvarado to your list for sure, but to be honest, parents love elementary schools throughout SFUSD. I encourage you to look beyond test score ratings and talk to parents whose children attend schools. Join the Lottery Support Group to get questions answered from other parents. There are so many great schools in the city that families love.
Submitted by parent on January 27, 2022

Extremely happy that we chose Alvarado. Great community, events and especially the teachers. My kid was in general Ed and moved to Spanish immersion off the waitlist in first grade. She’s happy in the program even though she’s a little behind. I always feel good dropping her off there knowing it’s such a solid school. Principal Sadja is strong. She’s committed to safety and always goes above and beyond in communication and more. Homework in GE was optional in first grade but required in Spanish immersion.
Submitted by parent on April 09, 2021

We've had an excellent experience transferring in and staying for a few years. All the teachers we've dealt with have been effective, even if very different in their styles. The Principal, who has been there more than two years now, is excellent and caring. Despite the distance learning this year, she has gotten the most out of the school possible, given the limiting circumstances. Our experience of individual support for children with various needs and/or IEPs shows that they are responsive when parents are involved. Even with limited time available for a large elementary school, they show team effort in getting individual kids to succeed. The Art program is excellent. Community spirit is very good, and the vast majority of kids arrive and depart with excitement and smiles. Social justice messages are strong. Our experience here at Alvarado showed how excellent the SF public school system can be at its best (aside from the pandemic), but the PTA here raises a lot of money for supplementing the budget which isn't available at other public schools, so we feel particularly lucky we got in.
Submitted by parent on February 19, 2020

Our family is incredibly happy at Alvarado. Our daughter is thriving in the Spanish Immersion program; each one of her teachers has been a positive role model in her life; and she has a smile on her face every day after school. The students are fortunate to participate in several enrichment programs, including music, computers, library, as well as year-round art and science. Our new principal is a ray of sunshine and everyone enjoys kicking off the day with her and our teachers at morning circle. Last, but most certainly not least, we are also thankful for the kind, fun and thoughtful community at Alvarado. Friendships are vast and parents eagerly gather on a regular basis for volunteer and social events.
Submitted by parent on February 19, 2020

A wonderful, united, and involved parent community is an integral part of a great school, and Alvarado has this. Friendly, open-minded, and diverse, I am happy to be part of this group of kind people who are strong advocates for their children's education. Our new principal is communicative and a strong, quiet leader. Great experience overall, but more so int he past year since this new leadership has taken hold.
Submitted by parent on December 30, 2019

Overall excellent. I wish all the schools in the district were so well supported.
Submitted by parent on December 12, 2019

We’ve been having a great experience so far. Our new principal is fantastic, families are involved and the community is really great and diverse.
Submitted by parent on December 03, 2019

We have had an excellent experience at Alvarado. The student population is diverse, the parent community is welcoming and the PTA's desire to help provide extra learning opportunities (strong art program, computer lab, supplemented science, dance, music, new outdoor play spaces) makes this an enriching learning environment. Our daughter is thriving and we have a community we are happy to be a part of.
Submitted by parent on October 29, 2019

5 stars. Our experience so far is that the community is welcoming and supportive and the curriculum appropriately rigorous. Our daughter loves attending this school. I'm excited to send my younger daughter there next year too.
Submitted by student on August 20, 2019

I have a kinder and fourth grader in SI and love Alvarado. The Spanish Immersion program is outstanding. Amazing community of parents and teachers who deeply care about the school and our students. It's a happy, safe and fun place where kids learn academics and social-emotional skills and make friends for life. So thankful to be in this school.
Submitted by parent on March 08, 2019

A warm community school with strong parental involvement, strong PTA, and healthy PTA funds, excellent after school program, additional on-site extracurricular programs, a principal committed to social emotional learning and social justice culture at the school, and teachers that take an individualized approach to student needs.
Submitted by parent on March 08, 2019

Excellent school, strong community, caring and intelligent teachers, fantastic Spanish immersion program.
Submitted by parent on October 02, 2018

Really good. We have been at the school for 5 years now. Both of our children are happy and thriving and learning how to be smart, caring young ladies and gentlemen. Kids are pretty resilient and adaptive and they figure things out quickly and learn by modeling our behavior as parents and adults. It really does take a village but the more we, as parents participate in the school activities, the better and happier our children are. It's not always about how much money the PTA raises but what we do for the kids as far as emotional support and loving them that counts.
Submitted by parent on August 24, 2018

Overall, Alvarado has been a wonderful school for my daughter.
Submitted by parent on April 04, 2018

Great teachers, students, parents and location. It‘s a wonderful school in Noe Valley.
Submitted by parent on September 04, 2017

I have a 3rd grader Spanish immersion student from an English-only family, and he is now fully bi-lingual and loves math/science thanks to the excellent education he's received at Alvarado thus far. The PTA is super active and involved, and our fundraising is a well-piled machine that sets the high water mark among many SF public schools. We've had some complex issues with administrative leadership & changes over past couple years, but thanks to a strong PTA I am confident we will weather these upheavals, and continue making improvements to the quality of education that all alvarado students receive. I feel like the test scores for SI students are misleading b/c the testing is only offered in English, and it begins in 3rd grade, but the SI students don't really start learning to read and write in English until 3rd grade. If the testing was offered in Spanish, their grades would top the charts! Overall, we are very happy at this school and love the strong connections we have made within this community.
Submitted by parent on August 20, 2017

Excellent. Outgoing principal Sara Shenkan-Rich did some awesome things with literacy curriculum at school that at first teachers resisted. The school is in a better place because of her.
Submitted by parent on May 28, 2017

As most reading the reviews here will conclude: Alvarado is a fantastic community with awesome families and excellent teachers. It is undoubtedly one of the most socio-economically diverse schools in San Francisco. The PTA is active and committed, creating and supporting programs that are not available in other places. It is, at the end of the day, a really cool school. Regarding the current leadership situation: it is true the last principal did not work out. This resulted from a combination: a Principal who needed to collaborate more, and some teachers who could have been more open to new ideas. But this is far from a crisis. Alvarado's results have been consistently good for years. The one low mark seen on Great Schools relates to the English performance of lower income communities, and this is ridiculously misleading stat that ignores critical components of the demographic. And the good results come from an environment where 'teaching to the test', something most of us claim to abhor, was traditionally not a rigid philosophy. As for the future: we need to focus on the current issues but we are not worried. The community is great, the kids are happy. There are some ideas floating around about replacing outgoing teachers that would truly enhance academics at the school. We are lucky to be here.
Submitted by parent on May 25, 2017

Alvarado elementary is a very active school. The visual arts have always been strong and the music arts were very impressive this year. Excellent parent participation and funding has enabled the school to make up for what the school district has fallen short in providing. There is extra help in math, sciences, literary arts, physical education and more. With the strong dedication to the school and involvement of our principal Ms Shenkan-Rich, the school has made some progress in getting the curriculum updated, there are more books, computer based math learning, more science, improved funding, and collaboration with Stanford to study and improve learning at Alvarado. Unfortunately all of this progressive movement has shaken up some of the more change resistant faculty who riled up a very vocal minority of parents, who have created such a stink that it has caused quite the turmoil at the school, the school district and in the end it has driven the principal away. I am hoping, that with the change of guard with-in the PTA and all the learning that everybody hopefully has made in this upheaval, we are on our way to recovery and renewed focus on students and student learning will be forefront and center once again.
Submitted by other on May 25, 2017

I am one of the Directors of the Marina Counseling Center. Our center provides therapy services, free of charge, to the children at Alvarado. Sara Shenkin-Rich did an incredible job under very challenging circumstances. She is a visionary leader who focused on bringing positive change to a school that was struggling to move forward. Her dedication to making decisions that were aligned with the wellbeing of the children was remarkable and I was proud to be a service provider under her leadership. I'm sad that she is leaving, but I feel confident that Alvarado is moving in the right direction and am excited for the possibilities that Sara's time at the school has opened up for the incoming principal and school as a whole.