Academy For Enriched Sciences

The principal's dedication is second to none, the teachers are responsive and accommodating when making special requests, it's easy to be involved as a parent, they give free breakfast and the curriculum so far has been damn decent. The only downside is that they don''t get a certain type of funding from the state, or feds (I honestly forget what it's called) so to fund cool extra classes like music or robotics they rely on parents making donations-- which they do, quite a bit, and usually always meet the fundraising goals-- but be prepared to get hit up for money often. Obviously, that is easy to justify, but, they hit us up for money more than my alma mater does, and that's saying something. Monetary badgering notwithstanding, I didn't have any complaints, because, in every grade since 1st, the teachers have gotten progressively better, they''re diverse as all get out, the events they put on are cool and our daughter likes them a lot. For example, during a recent event, they hired an in-n-out catering truck to come to the event, so obviously everyone loved that. Oh, and I should state for the record that I' 'm probably the hardest to appease or impress parents in the entire district; I was raised by two San Francisco Summer of Love hippies, one of whom was a conscientious objector drafted in the Vietnam War, and the other was an alternative education conference circuit speaker, who unschooled my brother and I from K-12. She wrote several books on education and when people would come to the door and ask for money from the local school district she' 'd laugh at them and say she' 'd gladly sign something and donate if they promised to take money AWAY from the school system. That''s not a joke, either. My point is that I was not raised with the idea that schools are anything other than glorified child prisons, with very Carlin-esque undertones in believing they're only there to create good little worker bees who pump out obedient little drones who are just smart enough to do the paperwork and run the machines, but just dumb and complacent enough to passively accept the system that's rigged against their ability to think freely or prosper past a certain level. So the fact that I like and think AES is good enough to send my daughter to should speak volumes for this place. I like it, and I don''t hate it, even though I was indoctrinated to. Take that how you will!