JCC Kids Club at Joaquin Miller Elementary School

Archived Q&A and Reviews

Opinions on Kids Club at Joaquin Miller

March 2016

Our daughter will be entering kindergarten at Joaquin Miller this August, and I'd love to hear opinions about their aftercare program, Kids Club. I'm stressing about it. I can't find much info online, so thought I'd ask here to see if anyone has a child in the program and can offer some feedback?
Thanks! Worried mom

We have a kindergartner in Kid's Club-bioth am and pm-and she loves it! I, too, am very pleased with the program-- very caring teachers, great options for classes, obvious effort to make everyone happy, and a necessary option on minimum days and holidays. With all the classroom focus on academics, it's wonderful that the kids have this program. I suspect it's my daughter's favorite part of the day! Hope other families feel as positive and next year is more of the same. Very happy customer

March 2015

RE: Experience with Adventure Time at Oakland Public Schools?

I'm a bit confused by your question as it doesn't inquire about any specific AdventureTime site, but all of them in Oakland - they have more than 30 throughout the Bay Area. If you'll be going to one of those schools, perhaps it would make sense to ask about that school's AT program; there are likely to be differences among them.

Also, it is no longer correct that AT is at Joaquin Miller; they left last year and have been replaced by a different after-school program. The new program at JM, now at the beginning of its third session and still having plenty of room for improvement, is called Kids Club and is run by the JCC, although it is contractually, philosophically and in practice secular. There's no Jewish education or practice other than in the values, which are all about educating, entertaining and caring for children.

Just tonight, there was an end-of-session pot-luck assembly put on by Kids Club at which the kids displayed the results of their involvement with the various enrichment options provided to them at no additional fee in the Kids Club program. First, the ballet class performed; there were a whole lot of incredibly adorable K, 1 & 2 little girls and a few little boys leaping and spinning across the stage to cheers of parents and other kids. This was followed by kids doing their routines from their cross-fit class to hip-hop music. There were four other performances from other classes, including Ballandos, the latin dance class. There was a performance by the Circus Arts class and the Strings (violins/cellos) class. Along the walls, there were tables covered with the kids' projects from the prior session, including the comic books they created in Comic Book art; cuttings from the plants they had grown in Gardening; Italian sodas being served by the kids from the Il Fornaio cooking class. The grand finale for the assembly had everyone go out onto the playground to watch the eruption of the 5-foot tall volcano created by kids in the Volcanos class.

All these enrichment classes plus many more are provided by the Kids Club program at no additional charge other than the same hourly rate that AT charged. There are a number of for-charge enrichment classes also available, via external vendors, such as Strings and Circus Arts, both of which were on stage this evening. Since Kids Club has such rich offerings, it's serving to push upward the quality of the external vendors' offerings, which is helping to make the whole situation even better. Now, parents and kids have a tremendous assortment of enrichment classes to choose among, including free play and library/homework club, with more than enough no-charge classes to fill their afternoons. For the next session, they're introducing German and Spanish classes, about which folks are very pleased. Imagine, foreign language exposure in a public elementary school!? Unimaginable.

One of the best elements of the transition from AT to KC is that KC has a completely separate program for the K kids. They have their own facilities, including playground and play equipment that's not crawling with 5th graders, they're given rest time in quiet places, and there are special classes for them like, ''Dr. Seuss Reading Time'', K Cooking, Tumbling and more. With AT, the K kids would be met at their classroom, escorted to the AT and then they were on their own in the chaos of the older kids. For the K kids program alone, the change was worthwhile. Speaking of meeting the kids at the classroom, that's what KC does for all grades, not just K. When the end-of-school bell rings, there's a KC counselor at the door of each classroom, taking roll of the kids in the program that day and then escorting them to where they get snacks - organic fruits/whole grains, etc - and then break off to their enrichment classes, free play or quiet reading time/homework help in the library. AT did their roll call between 3:15-3:45p, which meant that from when the end-of-school bell went off at 2:50, a hundred or more kids were at large with no adult accountable for their whereabouts. It seemed a perfect set-up for a tragedy. Also, AT's ''homework club'' was useless for our child Often, the ''teachers'' were people that had no idea how to help the kids and in some cases that hadn't finished high school. The KC teachers are college grads, many on credentialed teacher tracks. They deeply engage with the kids and, unlike AT, many of them are men. It's great to have (young) adult male influences around the kids.

This may not be answering your question directly, but if what you were asking is whether there's anything interesting going on in after school care programs among the hill schools, there certainly is at Joaquin Miller, and it's not AdventureTime. We strongly recommend that all parents at hill schools who read this recognize that there's a marketplace out there of after-school providers and encourage your PTA and/or principal to look into it. AT has been entrenched for so long that they just seem to be a part of the schools. In fact, there are far better choices for the same money or equivalent providers for approximately 1/2 the money. One way is much better for the kids, the other creates more equity. Either way, it's better. happily transitioned after-school program parent
 

Jan 2015

RE: Are things better w/ the Joaquin Miller principal?

The fact is that JM is a very good school, a great community and now has an afterschool program that is considerably better than before in all regards, from number of families served to enrichment to security. Certainly, there have been some problems in the first few months of the new program, Kids Club, run by the JCC, but they're making continual improvement and it certainly appears that the kids are loving their experiences there. If you're considering JM, you really should drop by any day after 3p, introduce yourself to the Kids Club management, and see what's going on. Most especially if you're considering afterschool care for a K kid. Under AT, they were walked into the portable and then had to make their way among the chaos of kids up to 5th. Under KC, they have their own, separate program, playground, rest/nap/quiet ares, classes and teachers. The difference for the K kids is night and day. If you can, drop in on any other AT at any of the Hill Schools and you'll quickly see the difference.  Kids-focused JM parent