Don Callejon School

Thinking that many of these negative comments were submitted by parents who were bumped out of the boundaries. We have had a great experience in both elementary and middle schools. Teachers are excellent.
—Submitted by a parent

Okay school. The facilities are good, but bullying is a problem here and needs to be prevented.

After thirty years of teaching experience, I'm glad that I landed at Don Callejon! This K-12 school is a real community with teachers and staff at all levels working together to ensure the best possible education for a diverse group of students. Many of the upper and lower grades form partnerships work together four or five times a year. Administration strives to create positive atmosphere where both safety and success are emphasized. Teachers make themselves available to help students during lunches and after school. We provide enrichment with leadership, yearbook, orchestra, drama club, Odyssey of the Mind, Spanish, karate, Chess Club, and Reading Circles. Children at Callejon also benefit from having a very active parent and community support group that pays for such things as arts education, field trips, software licensing, video licensing, technology for the classrooms, and extra staff to monitor recess play. I am very proud to wear my Callejon Cubs staff t-shirt!
—Submitted by a teacher

Don Callejon is far from Perfect. The Elementary classes are pretty good, on par with other Santa Clara elementary schools. (Which are all pretty good) However, the big downside to this school are the middle school grades. Students are disrespectful, and many of the teachers don't seem to care. Issues of bullying are ignored by the administrative staff which seems to lack the courage to do what needs to be done. If you have a choice in Middle Schools, I suggest you look to Buchser. (Cabrillo and Peterson are also better alternatives.) Please note, I have experience working at each of these schools.
—Submitted by a teacher

Wow! The only thing my parents deprived me of by taking me out of this horrible middle school is bullying, humiliation and not learning anything. Going to the new charter is the best thing they have ever done for me. I have fun and look forward to going to school now. I also am actually being taught something now. Callejon teachers are fine but they waste half of the day dealing with students who do not care about learning or behaving. I fit in at Magnolia and do not have to worry about bullying, drugs and inappropriate behavior. I guess I am deprived not learning about those things instead of what I should be learning at school. This is part of the problem at callejon a few kids are treated better than the rest because of who their parents are. Even us kids know it. So I apologize for my parents not making you happy and thinking about my education and safety instead of you and your child. Because this is what we are suppose to do at Callejon, make things more comfortable for Rivermark children at every other students expense.

I agree with much of what has been said about the negatives about the school. For those parents who have stayed in middle school, I can only ask that you really look at it objectively instead of saying it subjectively that the middle school will get better and the truth is that it won't. Standards have dropped shockingly from their elementary levels, look at the API scores and star test scores for those level and you can see it there. It is unfortunate but the comments about favoritism is shockingly ttrue where administration and teachers do not take actions against certain parents and certain parents are chummy with parents because that puts any teacher in a tough position when they have to chastise or punish those parents' kids.
—Submitted by a parent

This school started off on a great note with parent & community enthusiasm to build a great K-8. However, somehow over the last year or so its lost the vision to arrogance, cliques and head-in-the-sand mentality. The teachers threw up their hands with additional kids in the classes due to budget cuts and make this an excuse for doing the bare minimum. The Principal & staff have a "take-it-or-leave-it" stance to feedback growing out of the boundary war which led them to believe they were the only good school in Santa Clara. Now that most of the involved parents & high performing kids are leaving for Magnolia Charter, they hopefully will wake up & smell the coffee. A lot of bullying by kids and also by a small coterie of "insider parents" make this school a hotbed of politics and the very antithesis of a community building school that traditional public schools have been.
—Submitted by a parent

It's a great school.Our experience with this school has been very fulfilling.The teachers are great and take a lot of pain and effort for the intellectual development of the kids .My child looks forward to going to school everyday and is full of praises about interesting things they do in school everyday.
—Submitted by a parent

This school is not by any means ideal. The school is too open. Any random people can walk around. Teachers .. well we've only seen the kindergarten .. horrible! We took are child out of that school QUICK
—Submitted by a parent

I am a parent of a middle schooler, as well as a high schooler who attended middle school here. Callejon is a fabulous school with teachers and administrators who go out of their way to help students excel in both academic and extra curricular endeavors. The K-8 environment is excellent and allows middle schoolers to feel good about being a role model.
—Submitted by a parent

This school has just gotten worse the last few years. Rezoning has done nothing but make it that way. The blatant favoritism for certain parents and students is stopping, and will continue to stop the school from reaching the possible potential it once had. Better to send your middle school child to Magnolia. This site might be new and shiny but it is broken and probably cannot be fixed until the district wakes up and makes major changes and makes it clear it is a public school and does not belong to a few individuals. But that will never happen, so this school will continue to decline. 30+ students in the course of 7 weeks leaving a middle school of only 370 makes it clear this school is broken and needs major fixing.
—Submitted by a parent

If you only care about new building then you should send your child to this school, but if you really care about your child's future and his eduction then this school is not a good place for him. One evidence of the school standard and worst environment is that most parents of the 5th grade kids decided to move their kids out of this school and send them to nearby charter school. Even the former school PTA president move their kids to that charter school. Bullying issues are common place at this school.
—Submitted by a parent

School run by a select group of parents. The same parents allowed to bully and talk bad about other parents in front of kids during school time without consequences. If you don't live at the correct address you and your child will be treated like you do not belong. It's why many are leaving and sending their children to the new charter school, where education and safety of the kids is important and not neighborhood boundaries or personal politics.
—Submitted by a parent

Bad school ever this teachers didn't teach my son who is in 7th grade. Don't give homework and teacher. The whole middle school is a fail.
—Submitted by a parent

I am a parent of a 1st grade student in this school. My son is much happier in this school than his previous private school. He is challenged in school on a regular basis. He is progressing extremely well in DCS. Parents who, also, live in the Rivermark Community that sends their kids to private schools should take a second look at this school.This school is doing lots of things to improve the quality of the education, re-zoning was a big part of it. Since the re-zoning grades K-5 is rated 10. In a short few years this school should be a 10 overall. The school is going through a filtering process. We have looked at schools in Cupertino, Palo Alto, which has great schools, DCS's quality of education is no different. Parents in Rivermark should take time to checkout the school yourselves, ask the teachers questions, ask the principle questions then compare with what you are currently getting in the private school. Bottom line, our son went to a private school and now he is in DCS with excellent progress. He is able to do more now than his previous classmates who is currently in the private school. The reviews about politics is silly, were you zoned out? Sorry?
—Submitted by a parent

Beware, the drama and gossip. You should just ignore all the gossip and when one of your *********** comes to tell you a rumor, you should avoid making comments that the person can use to create drama. If you ignore or don't act upon the gossip, they will eventually get tired of spreading the gossip.

I can say all the schools in CA is getting harder because of cut budgets. One teacher for 30 kids is just too many. No free school bus to the school and no teachers aid. The school asked parents to involve more to cover music, art and PE lessons. The facility is very nice though.
—Submitted by a parent

I am a student at Don Callejon and I'd say that everything is good in Don Callejon. I think that the teaching there is great all the way up to the 5th grade, which I am in now. The middle school there isn't all that great, I think that middle school there isn't the best it can be, all the way. The elementary is great, and I've been through all of it. Though a few people don't like P.E, you still learn a lot of the physical activities, which is what P.E is for, don't you think. I gave this scool an average and not above because the elementary is up to standard, but I don't think that the middle school is. There is a spirit day every Friday, though, to indicate school spirit. I personally think that Don Callejon is a great school, and that all elementery should at least be that good, and that all middle schools should at least be like it, if not better. I guess it would be a standard in many cases. Any elementary/middle school can't be lower than that, or else it would be below standard, which means it is just not a very good school. If any elementary scool is above that, then it is a great school, and if any middle school is above it, then that middle school is just average/okay!!!

This one of the better schools in SCUSD. There are good teachers, but working with constant budget cuts is very challenging. Lots of politics here within community members and related to boundaries, rezoning etc. Middle school has to improve a lot and many parents within the school boundary is opting for private when it comes to middle school. Hope it does better in future.

The school has just gone through a rough period of time involving a reboundarying situation due to the overcrowding at this great school. The overcrowding came due to the great job everyone was doing - principal, teachers, students, parents and communities. It is understandable that parents are upset. This was a no-win situation for anyone. However, the school will continue to thrive and the school that will be impacted by the move will thrive too as a result of the great students and parents that will be moving over. It would be great if all the communities could come together to help in the transition and form some groups like Girls Scouts to keep friends in contact and keep the bonds that have formed. The kids will all be together in high school again and to keep them in touch with each other then will help them ease into high school too.
—Submitted by a parent