Joseph Gilbert Elementary

Although the Del Valle school seems to be maligned by these statistics, the teachers and staff are very helpfully and willing to do extras above and beyond the expected. The G&T program is young, as are the students, but pushes for excellence. We have been very happy and our friends who are teachers tell me that the performance rankings will be skewed do to the population that may not value formal education so highly.

Gilbert suffers from two major issues which have directly affected the district's rating in the State of Texas.

The first issue is that the entire Del Valle School District treats English as a second language. All documentation and communication is at least 50% Spanish. Non-Spanish speaking kids do not get as much attention and assistance as the Spanish-speaking children. As a Parent I have seen this first-hand for many years and it is very frustrating. This issue is most painful when trying to get your child some type of tutoring assistance. The tutoring sessions at Del Valle are mostly in Spanish, and my child receives busy-work instead of exercises that are focused on his needs.

The second issue is specific to Gilbert Elementary. When your child is rewarded or punished during school hours the Parents are not notified. Assistant Principal Dwiggins has told me this numerous times, so it appears to be school policy.
If your child is bullied by another student, or gets into any situation that Gilbert determines should result in discipline you will not be notified about the situation.
Note that as required in the State of Texas, the School Nurse does contact parents, and does document everything a student required.
The reason I feel this is such a big issue is that since the parents are not involved, the school will make rather odd and misplaced decisions about how to discipline the students. Most trivial incidents result in the Del Valle equivalent of Detention. You are NOT notified if you child is sent to detention.
My child was disciplined multiple times for odd incidents. In most cases when I heard that my child was in trouble and visited the school, the Principal could not even determine what the facts were and had to 'cancel' the discipline.
This also means that had I not been involved as Parent, my child would have been punished for something that he did not do and did not even know about.
As a result, my children have always feared the environment at Gilbert Elementary because they may be reprimanded at any time for something that they know nothing about.
I witnessed children that were punched by another student being sent to Detention multiple times.