Alice M Birney Elementary School

My daughter attended Birney for Kindergarten-​4^th grade. She was my first child, and I thought the school was ok at first, but in retrospect I think I just didn’t know any better. It was actually pretty bad.
While there were a few good teachers there (Mrs. Smith who taught 4^th grade was awesome) others were just terrible. One teacher there has a hearing impairment and can’t moderate her voice volume, and she literally yells at her 1^st graders and scares them to death, and no one is told about what the real issue is. At my insistence she finally told the kids why she raised her voice, and they developed a system to let her know she’s too loud. But why did it take my involvement to do something so simple?
The school suffers from a lot of lack, lack of parental cooperation, lack of supplies (asking parents to supply basic stuff like copy paper, glue stick, kleenex) lack of good leadership (the principal Mr. Espinosa is a total joke) and overall they have poor test scores. My biggest compliant though is how they treat special education students. Despite the fact that schools like Birney get $ from the federal govt just for use on special ed students, the school is not doing its job of looking for, testing and providing special ed services to students. I have seen kids who are clearly autistic having meltdowns in classrooms and the teachers pretend nothing is wrong, I guess to save money — but all the kids are suffering due to the interruption. As a parent volunteer I saw a kid so far behind in math it was crazy, and nobody is doing anything to help him, just letting the poor kid fall farther behind since he had parents that were not involved.
I pushed the issue really hard for my kid who has attention issues, and got her an IEP and services, but then they would not actually give my kid the services they agreed to in writing (in her IEP). They pulled all kinds of stunts to cover up the fact that they were violating her rights and not providing her services, including lying, delaying, faking up documents, etc. I am a lawyer, and I could not get them to comply short of a lawsuit, so good luck to the non-​English speaking parents. I finally took my child out and enrolled her in the school district where her daddy lives, and the improvement was immediate. After a year in her new school, the improvement has been astronomical.
So long story short, if academics are important to you, or your child has special needs, run don’t walk to another school or district.

So many fond memories here…
The education wasn’t all that good. I can’t remember learning anything here, but I had a hell of a good time.
I don’t know if they still do this but we wen’t to Camp High Hill in the 5^th grade. That was the high light of the year, 1 week without parents, and all your friends it didn’t get any better.