What is wrong with Longfellow?

Longfellow has historically been a 'choice' middle school, meaning no one was zoned to attend. Kids were zoned for either Willard or King and then some opted in to Longfellow. it's been underenrolled due to that and hasn't been as well-invested-in as the other two schools. With that said there are LOTS of happy kids and parents at Longfellow even with this policy.

This is all historical - check out this article to explain the rezoning: https://www.berkeleyside.org/2022/06/16/berkeley-votes-desegregate-midd…

Things are going to smooth out and be more equitable given the change, and I think the school is only a little bit away from being viewed more positively!

For our family, our primary concern was the travel distance from our home to Longfellow (3.5 miles) compared to our currently-zoned middle school (1 mile). My children didn't go to Sylvia Mendez, but I will say that decisions that made sense when enrolling my kids in elementary school aren't necessarily the same for selecting a middle school. I may have been OK with my child needing to ride a school bus to and from elementary school, but we wanted our kids to develop independence once they got to middle school. We did not want them needing to rely on parents driving them to and from school.  My older child was able to get themselves to and from our zoned middle school (by foot or by bike) and that would not have been possible for our younger child had they been assigned to Longfellow. I realize that school bus service is now being considered for LF, but that given early morning music and after school sports and clubs in middle school, any child needing to rely on a school bus to attend LF won't be able to fully participate in the school. Certainly the lower test schools at LF (compared to King and Willard) and the impending huge construction project also gave us pause, but the distance was our main concern. 

Okay, so you've opened a big huge can of worms here-- I imagine you'll get lots of responses. But here's mine. People are voicing concerns and frustration around issues with upcoming construction, desire for "academic rigor," and commute/transportation. To me, these all seem like the tentacles of race and class bias-- which has bred a longstanding negative reputation of the school due to de facto segregation that the district is finally getting around to correcting, and also explains the school's fairly abysmal test scores compared to Willard and King (they're creeping up, albeit slowly). I have a kid at Longfellow that came from Sylvia Mendez. It is a great place--the staff are kind, caring, experienced, committed, and warm, and I have found the administration to be responsive and engaged. We feel very, very grateful to be a part of the community-- and very much in support of the new K-8 TWI policy. Best wishes to your family on the journey. 

Because of the way the middle school zones were divided (it's quite different from the elementary school process) Longfellow's population ended up becoming more segregated along race and class lines, and thus developed a reputation because of it. BUSD is implementing a new middle school enrollment policy that will change this and help desegregate the schools. Here's an article about it: https://www.berkeleyside.org/2022/11/10/busd-middle-school-enrollment-d…

Until the change goes into effect, Longfellow may continue to have a reputation but I'm very optimistic about its future. I used to volunteer at Longfellow. They have amazing teachers and staff, and they're working hard to make positive changes and support students. I hope that families give LMS a chance and find ways to get involved and invest in the school's future. 

This is something I had posted previously, so not especially out of date but I'm reposting here in case it's helpful:

My child was at Longfellow for sixth grade a couple years ago (2019-2020). I don't know about the current zoning situation or when that will be resolved. I believe BUSD has been assigning all or almost all late applicants to Longfellow. At 2019 fall registration they were still making up student schedules on the fly and said it was very challenging because BUSD had sent them 70 or so kids at the last minute.

The school has some really amazing teachers (also Ms. Ayesha is amazing), but from what I saw they did not have adequate resources to effectively support the students in that year's sixth grade. I had the impression that this was a fairly new development, but I can't say for sure. Under principal Wyatt the focus of sixth grade seemed to be socio-emotional type issues with academics being a much lower priority. (E.g. there was a year-long "study skills" class that all students were absolutely required to attend regardless of whether this was useful for them.). That said, Ms. Wyatt seemed very devoted to the school and the children, and my child always spoke of her in glowing terms. Ms. Wyatt resigned near the end of last year and the school has a new principal now. The beginning of seventh grade "distance learning" was disorganized and there was a notable difference in the outreach from Longfellow versus my other child's school (more effort to engage from the other school). We are no longer participating so I can't say whether it has improved with time.  

I'm posting this because I had a really hard time finding up to date information about the situation at Longfellow when BUSD assigned us there. Yet when I spoke to people there seemed to be a well-known concern that it was not on par with other BUSD middle schools. I don't think it's fair that families moving into the district are at an information disadvantage. I also don't mean to suggest that it wasn't a valuable experience for my child in many ways, but there do seem to be inequities across the three middle schools that need to be addressed by BUSD.

New note with the TL:DR version: Despite having dedicated teachers the classrooms were frequently chaotic, and some in the administration seemed to view academics as not the first priority. Obviously, one could reasonably argue that the first priority was to calm the chaos and create an environment where kids could focus on academics. I believe there was some info collected that showed vast disparities between the funding and the student needs in the 3 middle schools (Longfellow needed more but had substantially less). 

I know there is a new principal and I believe that BUSD recognized the need to make changes, but it was unclear what would be done and when. I hope that things are better there now as the school was full of great kids and teachers.  

I plan on sending our SM kids to Longfellow when they're that age. That said, I'm disappointed that the BOE didn't move to letting families choose from all three middle schools instead of assigning them. They argue it's for diversity but they could still have let families rank their order of preference and then assigned based on diversity (which is like what they do for elementary anyway). I think it's going to end up driving more families to private schools unfortunately. Though I hope folks will request the waitlist option because it may work out as it did for us.

Anyway, I highly recommend reading some articles on Berkeleyside to understand some history of Longfellow and BUSD in general to get a sense of (maybe) where some complaints are coming from. 

https://www.berkeleyside.org/2018/10/16/a-radical-decision-an-unfinishe… First article in a series of three on the radical integration of BUSD that obviously still greatly affects our schools today (links to the 2nd & 3rd articles in the first paragraph of article)

https://www.berkeleyside.org/2020/01/28/crisis-or-crossroads-whats-in-t… An article that came out a few years ago that provides some background for understanding the BOE's recent decision