Maria Carrillo High School

6975 Montecito Boulevard

School District

Santa Rosa High
Grade

9-12
Teacher/Student Ratio

1:23
Type

public

School Map for Santa Rosa High 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 January 28, 2023

Overall, pretty okay for high school. Lots of homework for the first three years (I am a senior) but it gets better 4th year. I feel very prepared for college academics wise. Good LGBTQ+ rep too, the student population is mostly indifferent/accepting. The only large problem is the amount of bathrooms. There are only 4 bathrooms (2 for girls, 2 for guys) available at all times to 1,500+ students, which obviously is not great. The school needs to put money and time towards making sure there are more bathrooms accessible.
Submitted by parent on March 31, 2021

The homework load is heavy and they are not lenient about it even during distance learning. My daughter already struggled with her foreign language course when it was in-classroom, and as you can imagine, learning a foreign language over Zoom has been a nightmare for her. This school has such great potential but unfortunately it belongs to a horrible school district. We started distance learning since March 2020 and it is now coming up on April 1, 2021 and we have not been back in the classroom at all. I would look into other school districts or a private school, and avoid Santa Rosa City Schools.
Submitted by student on December 31, 2018

Great advanced classes, oka teachers. Beware this school has a HEAVY homework load. Often skipped fun events to do loads of AP class homework.
Submitted by parent on December 22, 2018

friendly campus,high academic ,responsible teachers! my son love his school. he made friends here.
Submitted by parent on April 23, 2017

My 3 oldest children all graduated from Maria Carrillo and are now in college; one of those children has some learning difficulties. All 3 say that they felt they were extremely well prepared for college classes and have done very well. My youngest is currently at Carrillo, and is having very little trouble keeping up with his AP and honors classes; in fact, he says that his one academic class this year is boring because it moves too slowly. This is an outstanding high school for kids who want to be extremely well prepared for college - too many of my children's friends who went to other high schools struggled in college or dropped back to the local JC because they could not handle 4 year university work. All 4 of my children were and are involved in extracurricular activities: sports, clubs, theater, music, etc. There is a wide variety to choose from at Carrillo, and the coaches and faculty advisors are supportive, encouraging, and passionate about what they do. Carrillo is not perfect: I do not like the strong emphasis on English literature to the detriment of teaching proper writing, grammar, etc, and I am not happy that some teachers force their methods of studying and note taking on students when I believe each student needs to develop (and use) a method that works best for them. I would like there to be a greater variety of elective classes and some computer science classes. I will also say that all 4 of my children attended a small, rigorous private school prior to going into Carrillo in 9th grade, and I believe this school prepared my children extremely well for the work at Carrillo. It may behoove the local jr high schools to beef up their curriculum a bit rather than ask Carrillo to lower its standards so that students are better prepared for the college prep classes in high school. Overall, I am extremely happy with Carrillo High School and am very glad I did not send my children elsewhere.
Submitted by parent on May 19, 2016

Several years leading up to my child’s freshman year at Maria Carrillo, we were warned and discouraged from attending. For many reasons but mainly because of the academic overload the teachers and school puts on the students.Despite the warnings my child decided to go.My child has gone from a happy, spirited, passionate about learning student to an anxious, sleep deprived, and I hate school student. They have school Monday through Friday, 8:00 am to 3:00 pm, practice or extracurricular activities, homework for up to 5-6 hours a night, and then homework on the weekends. Even as adults we understand the importance of work-life balance for our mental and physical well beings. Why do we expect our children to endure such stress and anxiety?We were once told the school has created a culture of cheaters and I can see why. With the amount of homework they have, students have to rely on each other for answers in order to get the work completed. In addition to the ridiculous amounts of homework, some of the teachers lack the motivation to properly teach students but expect them to perform well on the tests.I think the administration and staff could benefit from reading Beyond Measure: Rescuing an Overscheduled, Overtested, Underestimated Generation and have a different approach in the years to come.High school is suppose to prepare adolescents for their careers and for college. It’s not meant to destroy our children’s well being, self-esteem, and health.
Submitted by student on August 29, 2015

I feel that this school is not motivational enough. My experience here was terrible because I felt that they were lacking community support. What I mean by this is that nobody would ask "How was your day?" or "Do you want to hang out with us?" I am a pretty shy girl but usually you would think that people would introduce themselves but nope. Not one person walked up to me and said "Hi." and yet I have introduced myself many times. I do understand that there's the Jocks, Rednecks, and popular groups but it shouldn't be that way. I feel that this school is too stuck up for me.
Submitted by student on April 05, 2015

This school is academically challenging and if you don't have the motivation to succeed then this school won't work for you. I am taking AP classes, as well as junior colleges, and work about 30 hours a week. I have a 4.0, however because of the ridiculous work load I have to deal with and the 3-4 hours of homework I have a night, I am near my point of breaking. This school pushes you so far, and if you're not strong enough, it's going to go against it's purpose and you will lose motivation. If I miss one class I have a mental breakdown because I'm afraid I won't be able to catch up. Many teachers say "no excuses" even if you have strep or you're throwing up. DO NOT ATTEND THIS SCHOOL UNLESS YOU'RE FULL AWARE OF THE WORK LOAD. I do wish my parents had sent me to another school, however I hope that college next year is survivable with the little people skills I made this year. I mean yeah cool I can solve for the standard deviation and confidence interval, but how exactly do I file a loan for all the college I'll have to pay next year? Thanks for the real life advice carrillo, doubt I'll need that Pythagorean theorem.
Submitted by parent on March 28, 2015

As a parent I believe our children need to graduate from High School with people skills, finance skills, healthy memories, effective literacy, learning techniques. Most importantly they need to experience what it feels like to effectively communicate with themselves and their surroundings positively. I took my kid out of this school not only because they were prejudiced and treated wrongly but because we did not even receive any compassion, understanding from the principle. The way they were being taught was so unsatisfactory and stupid that I couldn't believe my eyes. The information taught is not enough for a child to pursue a career in their desired field in the future. They focus too much on English and Math and not enough on psychology, true history, art, communication and manners. Least classy school, I dont recommend it.
Submitted by student on March 19, 2015

I'm finishing up my senior year and graduating with a 4.0 gpa (which doesn't even get me ranked in the top 10%). As far as AP classes go, don't complain if they give you tons of work to do; they're supposed to be the equivalent of a college class. If you can't handle it, don't sign up for them. As far as academic classes go, they are NOWHERE near as difficult as AP classes. They have a much smaller workload with a slower pace. For people who struggle with their classes, you need to take some initiative. If you ask a teacher, they can get you a list of peer tutors or tell you when tutoring hours are. Lastly, advocacy (homeroom) is there for a reason. If you're struggling, you can go ask a teacher for help. It's not impossible to stay afloat. The heavy workload is there for a reason. Imagine how much better prepared you are for the culture shock of college when you've already seen a glimpse of it. Sure, there are some bad teachers here. But in four years, I've only had one truly horrible teacher. I resent the fact that I've had to deal with him, but you'll experience a bad teacher anywhere. There is no perfect school, but I think that Carrillo tries its absolute best, as should you.
Submitted by other on June 19, 2014

This is a white trash school. Terrible administration, unfriendly kids. If you want to do well, you will have to have to be self-motivated because no one can or will help you. Montgomery isn't that much better though, so if you live in the district, I feel truly sorry for you.
Submitted by parent on March 26, 2014

If you are choosing between schools, this is probably not a good school to pick. We've experienced a lot of teachers here and while some are very good, most are terrible. This problem stems from the schools leadership. The principle is one of the most arrogant people you will ever meet and is obviously not involved in communicating with parents or teachers. If he were, there would be better organization and accountability in the teaching ranks. Same class, different teachers, different agendas. Doesn't make sense. The athletic program is even worse. They have 2 AD's yet neither can organize a sports program that promotes communication, good coaching, or care for all of the programs. One AD is an arrogant know it all and the other tries to hide from any work. This has to be the worst all around athletic program in Santa Rosa. A friend of ours is in the Carrillo district and never even attempted to have their kids attend that school. They are fairly hooked up in the school community and knew what the problems would be. I literally believe that the top people at the school are coasting their way to a paycheck. I wasn't surprised to see all of these bad reviews. When is change?
Submitted by parent on January 15, 2014

Our child is extremely strong academically and has been able to thrive in this school's conventional approach so that suited us well. In general, the teachers have been good, though some seem to teach the students to do things mechanically rather than really understanding, but ones like that are in the minority. The band program continues to be strong. The one drastic weekness is the leadership in the administration - in our opinion have been unhelpful and demonstrated astonishingly poor judgment, hence the low leadership score we gave.
Submitted by other on August 11, 2012

I attended this school for 3 and a half years. I had many troubles with math and never got further than I thought I would. I had only one teacher that was a great help for me throughout my whole high school career. The teachers are mostly rude and the campus student body was very rude in accepting me as a homosexual student. All in all, the school, the teachers, the administration spend too much time trying to help kids that don't need it and give all the bad attention to the kids who don't need it.
Submitted by parent on July 03, 2011

I am a parent of a recent graduate who is a good student but struggled at the school. This school is very "in the box" if you have a student who doesn't fit the "I am very disciplined and work very hard mode" then this is probably not the school for your child. There is not a lot of support or understanding for students that don't fit their mold. Some of the academic classes are taught at AP class level and some classes are taught at college level. This may be a good thing for the upper 5-10% of students but not for the remaining. Previous responses were correct the survey classes are for the behavioral kids. Very disappointed, my youngest will not be attending high school here. The only thing that saved my student was the advocacy teacher-most of the other teachers could have cared less. Forget about the counselors-they are too overworked and not very helpful. This is public school and unless we vote for more taxes to help it will only get worse. :(