The Stevenson PACT school is a wonderful public school, but it's not a typical public school, it's a "choice school". Meaning parents need to specifically request to the MVWSD District Office for enrollment.
Many public schools in California use similar alternative progressive teaching styles and highly organized parental involvement. These factors should be considered carefully by anyone who has an interest in Stevenson. Nobody should choose Stevenson just because some web-site gives Stevenson a high score, but rather because the parents feel the style of education and all other factors are the best fit for their child and family.
The District asks interested parents to attend an informational meeting about the PACT programs and methods and ask questions they may have before deciding if they wish to apply for enrollment in Stevenson.
The MVWSD District Office controls enrollment for every public school in the district. Stevenson has no voice in the process. Nobody at Stevenson, no parents, no staff, have any way to "accept" or "reject" any child.
Whenever any MVWSD school has too many kids requesting enrollment in any school, then the District Office puts all those kids into a random lottery to determine which kids get in on the first-cut and then the lottery sets a waiting list for the rest. This has been done in the same manner for several MVWSD schools in the past.
One poster said: "the school tends to attract rowdy/out-of-the-box boys who tend to take up a disproportionate amount of time from teachers and can be very distruptive. "
I challenge the assertion that Stevenson has more such students than any other public school in our district. I am personally aware of 3 such boys and all of whom have greatly improved over the years.
The law requires all public schools to enroll children regardless of their issues that may require extra effort on the part of the school. Stevenson is no different in this respect than any other public school.
The poster also claimed: "- a big lack of ethnic diversity, "
To that I can only say Stevenson students come from dozens of nationalities and maybe 2 dozen native languages. Our students come from all over Mountain View and represent every neighborhood and ethnicity I am aware of in our city.
Enrollment diversity in Stevenson depends on who chooses to apply for enrollment, not on any sort of quota system, which would be illegal.
It's true that Stevenson does not match the demographic percentages of the city population as a whole, nor even the kids, neither does any of our other public schools. If you look at the ethnic percentages or economic percentages of any of our public schools, they are all very far from matching the overall diversity of our district. read more