BUSD and psychosocial development
Hi. I don't have any experience yet with the BUSD, only with preschools at this point, and looking for parents of older kids to give me some feedback on the local elementary schools. I have a 3-year old, and we will be moving in the next year out of our South Berkeley home to a bigger one within Berkeley. We would like to move to a zone that has some elementary schools to pick from that also cover psychosocial needs, like teaching empathy, conflict resolution, etc. We were very happy to see that every preschool that we toured in Berkeley used positive guidance instead of punishment, and an emphasis on the psychosocial development of the child. That is such a difference from when I attended school in the Bay Area many, many years ago. So, my question is, please update me on current elementary school culture, do schools in BUSD include psychosocial development, or just some, or none? Names of schools? We are interested in all Berkeley zones at this point. Thank you.
Parent Replies
All schools in Berkeley use the same social emotion programs. You can check out Toolbox here (https://www.dovetaillearning.org/).
You really do not get to choose what school you get. There is a lottery for schools in your zone. I've found it can be very difficult to switch schools within a zone or between zones. I know some people can switch their assigned school but I also know many people that have not be able to switch (including us). Luckily, there aren't huge differences between the schools besides site, location and start time.
Exactly what MS said. BUSD has a district-wide program that provides a toolbox for managing emotions and conflict. Because of the lottery system, every school has approximately the same socio-economic profile. Thus, no school has more PTA and other parental resources, attention, etc., than others. All are good. In addition to start times and location, according to the tours I took of various schools in our zone, schools might differ in what the PTA emphasizes in terms of after school programs: it seemed one school was more into music; another into theatre arts, etc., in their after-school offerings. But so far these differences don't seem to be that profound. We just ended up choosing the school closest to us, and we've been very happy with it.