Bullis Charter

Don't believe the hype, ugh. Terrible.

We had a very poor experience with this school, as did our friends.

1. Non-union teachers mean over 1/3 of the staff is new each and every year. Usually, that also means they are fresh out of school and this is their first school experience. This is not a positive. Teachers are inflexible, struggle to manage classrooms, have little real world experience with kids and how they operate.
2. The teacher ratio listed on sites like Great Schools is inaccurate. They have a similar or worse ratio of real teachers to students as the LASD, MVWUSD, Sunnyvale district etc. They are also missing critical counselor support, as well as lacking specialty educators like SLPs, OTs.
3. They are not allowed to bring in outside, experienced vendors to do extra curriculars, like the rest of the schools are. For example, other schools can have soccer coaches. This school has teachers working overtime to provide extra curriculars that aren't in their wheelhouses. These activities are less engaging, less challenging, and less useful as a result.
4. They're screen-heavy compared to the local schools. All the local districts focus on STEM, but I'm referring to usage of computer programs to teach math and screen-heavy gamified learning. Especially for young learners, this is a disadvantage. I think the teachers are so burnout daily from longer hours (due to the need to teach extra curriculars) that they rely on screens for long breaks.
5. The facilities are poor. Why does this matter? At the elementary age, your children need to run around outside. They need to lift heavy things, do risky things like climbing trees, build fake shelters with friends as teamwork, and more. They have very little dedicated outdoor space because they are just sitting on top of a full middle school.
6. There are middle schoolers all around them. This becomes a problem because their spaces are not respected by the middle schoolers. There is more pressure on the 5th graders to be "cool" in the eyes of the older kids. More peer pressure is awful at this age. They never get to feel like they made it to the top of the ladder.
7. The school is underfunded. This materializes in many ways. First, parents have to do things like lunch duty. Maybe if you have lots of free time, that sounds great! But what it leads to is inconsistent child policing by parents who have wildly different ideas about personal ownership, conflict resolution and more.
8. An ever rising mandatory donation ask. It is $6k now per kid per year, in addition to payments for field trips, supplies, supplemental activities. To be clear, this is in no way similar to the local schools. Their average ask is $250. That's a 2400 difference.
9. There is a bullying problem. I can speculate about why, but it's consistently a problem at this school.
10. This schools tends to have parents who are intense about academic pressure. Many, if not all, of the kids are in things like Kumon or Russian math. They're competitive, on purpose. Collaboration takes a back seat.
11. They do not have the resources for special needs, IEP, minor concerns. It is well known that they decline enrollment for these students, suggesting you'd be better off elsewhere.
12. They're not a neighborhood school. They're a commuter school. This creates a noticeable lack of community. Your student's friends will not live near them. They will not bike to school together. They will not run into you at the local park. And it creates crazy long car pick up lines. These poor kids end up so isolated socially.
13. Students come and go at far higher rates than the neighborhood schools. Your student will lose their best friend. New kids are constantly being integrated. The in-school community feel is also lacking.
14. It's a sham. The language parents use about "winning" the lottery here is psychologically affecting them, tricking them into being more likely to pick this school bc it makes them feel special. Bullis spend a lot of money and time to make you feel that way - which would be better spend on the students, teachers, and facilities.
15. Charter schools MEAN constant change. That's how they work. They are their own district. This is so hard on kids who thrive on routine.
16. The controversies. The lawsuits. The uncertainty about where the school will reside. The hatred by local families who actually live next to you. The whispers, the judgement. Do you understand that you're signing up for that by going to Bullis?
17. When you move your kids into the local high schools, Bullis kids get bullied. They are reputationally rich outcasts. Most of their friends don't end up going to the same school, so they start over at a socially critical time.
18. The middle school is simply a low tier educational school. They hemorrhage middle school enrollment. They do not adequately prepare students for high school or college. It's a rude awakening.
19. LOW academic progress compared to local schools. THIS is

BCS Los Altos changed a lot lately