John Muir Elementary School
Hello everyone,
Our first grader has been assigned to John Muir Elementary School. It’s a beautiful campus, and appears to be a small school that may fit my child’s personality. The reviews I’ve seen here are from many years ago. My concerns are persistent regarding the small school and having to share resources with other schools. How is the music program? (particularly since the biggest school in this zone seemed to have a great program).
Looking for assurance here. Thanks in advance.
Aug 19, 2019
Parent Replies
Please allow me to reframe your concern for you, and put your mind at ease: every child in BUSD gets exactly the same wonderful music education as every other child, regardless of school size or location. BUSD music teachers (who are a fabulous team) travel from school to school throughout each school day to provide music education. The youngest children get eggshakers and the like, the 3rd graders get a recorder, the 4th graders choose an instrument and get music in small groups, which continues in 5th grade. The Berkeley Symphony visits them for more education. All of this is built into the school day. Middle schoolers have to choose whether they wish to continue, as music is often before or after school, and is every day. Same with high school. Mind you, this does not take into account whether or not an individual school's PTA chooses to offer additional enrichment, or school leadership chooses to spend their BSEP discretionary money on additional arts education rather than extra time with a reading or math specialist or the like. I hope this helps.
Hi, my children attended John Muir School, one grandchild graduated from JMS and one still attends. All of them have had great experiences there. The current attendee is in the music program, and although I can't attest to how "good" it is, I can say that she really likes it. I would recommend it without reservation.
Welcome to John Muir! I am a parent of a soon to be 5th grader who has been a John Muir parent for the last 8 years, since my 7th grader at Willard was a kindergartener. We have been very happy at John Muir and I am a member of the PTA. It is a lovely small school with engaged teachers and families. I have never felt like we need to fight for resources with larger schools in the district; BUSD is very good about making sure resources are well allocated among schools. The music program across BUSD is quite good and we've been very happy with music at John Muir (my 7th grader is going into her second year of orchestra at Willard) and my 5th grader plays clarinet at John Muir. They both also play piano outside of school. One of the benefits of a small school is you really have an opportunity to have your voice be heard and make a difference in your school community. Feel free to message me offline if you have any particular questions or please come join us for the first PTA meeting of the year September 10 to get to know some of the other families (childcare and dinner are provided).