Joaquin Miller Elementary School

Gee, go figure, the devastating principal who destroyed morale is now gone. Guess the «drama queens» (ie the majority of the community) had a legitimate complaint, after all.
Revising my review now that the Wicked Witch is gone. With her out the door, I truly believe JM will thrive and the community will heal from the damage she caused.
Well done drama queens! The rest could learn from their dedication to making JM a better place.

My daughter is now in fifth grade and we have enjoyed Joaquin Miller despite some bumps in the road. The teachers are pretty much incredible — dedicated to the kids and to teaching «outside the box» which inspires the kids to learn. The parent community is committed to supporting the teachers and the kids’ learning. The computer lab, library, engineering and p.e. classes (all with amazing teachers/​staff leading them) are tremendous assets. We have had some difficulties with the Principal, but she has moved on and we now have a phenomenal new principal who is a former JM teacher, well respected by parents, teachers and staff. I reserve the 5^th star primarily because it is an Oakland public school and so has challenges resulting from poor management of the District for many many years. Also, nothing is perfect… but JM has been a terrific school for my daughter and I would easily recommend to other families.

My son is currently a Kindergartner at JM and we have been extremely happy with the school, thus far. His teacher, Ms. Mandy, is organized, bright and dedicated. It is a wonderful, involved, passionate school community. There are so many extras, that I didn’t expect: PE teacher, science teacher, music, computers. Plus AMAZING class aides. GO JM!

My son is in kindergarten at JME and we have been very happy with the school — from his teacher, to all of the staff, to the principal, and the general school community. We couldn’t ask for anything more from our local elementary school.

This is our second year at JME, and we really love it. We had our choice to go to Montclair, Thornhill or JME, and we found JME to be a bit more down-​to-​earth and more fitting with our family. We have really liked Principal Smith from the start; she’s warm and a straight shooter. The new aftercare provider on site is PHENOMENAL, with tons of classes, great instructors and a really easy way to enroll and manage our selections each semester. The parents are all pushing forward to remove the drama queens and instigators from the PTA so we can focus on doing what’s best for our kids. Highly recommend this school.

Joaquin Miller teachers are AMAZING! the community is supportive and loving. I have a soon to be 5^th grader and another kid that has moved along to middle school. Are there politics and real issues right now? Yes but they don’t compare to the great education and family like atmosphere that both my son’s have experienced. Thank you Mrs. Green, Mrs McGowan, Mrs. McQueen, Ms. Scott, Ms Cooper-​Campbell and lovely Ms Cohn and the countless others who have all provided my boys with a safe, loving and well above average education.

I am a parent with 7 calendar years and 12 kid years (three kids) at this school. This school used to be good almost top to bottom, but has fallen on some hard times that I feel obligated to share with the community.
In this writer’s opinion, the problems can be traced back to the principal, Paulette Smith. Despite many ombudsman complaints to O.U.S.D., she is still the principal of the school much to the dismay of what appears to be the majority of the parents.
While there are many things people have griped about with respect to Ms. Smith, my focus is on her handling of before/​after care this year at the school.
In my opinion, the most important person on an elementary campus for any working parent, like me, is the before/​after care provider. Assuming a child spends six years at the school, if there is stability at the position, that person is the one the child will spend more time with than anybody else, by far.
I was approached by the director Joaquin Millers’ after school program (Adventure Time), back in November. She told me that it appeared as if the principal had it in for her organization (who had been on campus for 24 years) as well as her personally and was trying to get rid of both her and the organization. For a couple of months, I couldn’t believe it. Why would the principal seem to be going after an important and beloved person on campus?! It just made no sense. But over time, it became clear that what the director reported was true. Something was going on and Ms. Smith was unwilling to communicate to the parents about it.
Once it became clear to quite a few parents that Paulette Smith seemed to be unilaterally deciding on the fate of one of the most important aspects of the school — what the kids do after school and who they do it with — a large number of parents in the school reacted and insisted that a committee be formed to figure out what was going on.
I joined that committee. The first time in seven years at the school I became involved in anything more than field trips and fund raising. What a complete and total nightmare that committee was. Not because the committee didn’t so some really good things and not because there weren’t some good people on it, but because during the four months of the committee, I had to have had direct interactions with Paulette Smith and each one was a total train wreck.
Unlike Ms. Smith’s behind-​closed-​doors way in which she had been going about this process which stressed all of the parents out, the committee was totally open. Paulette Smith was invited to each meeting. She was also cc’d in every email communication as we attempted to be as transparent as possible. Yet, she did not make an appearance until the fifth meeting and her appearance was a calamity.
After the committee had fully surveyed (with great success) the general population in both Spanish and English and was already breaking down the data, she shows up for the first time. She arrived about an hour late, spends only about 10 minutes at the meeting and doesn’t ask a single question about the survey. She did only two things. The first thing she did was say to the very diverse committee (stunning almost speechless everyone present), «Well. .. It doesn’t look like this committee represents the diversity of the school.» Her only other action during her 10 minute visit was to public berate one of the teachers in front of the committee. A teacher who had been donating her time to assist with this process. Her 10 minute visit was simply one of the most unprofessional and offensive things I have seen in my entire adult life. Right on my children’s elementary campus!
Then she just got up an left.
My next encounter with Ms. Smith was no less unprofessional. It happened a couple of weeks later when the committee was presenting the results of the survey to the general parent population in the cafeteria. Ms. Smith walks in a few minutes late (about 6:10pm) and announces that she may not be able to stay for the whole meeting because, and I quote, she «has a doctor’s appointment.» I kid you not. She claimed, in front of about 40 parents, that she had a doctor’s appointment in the evening. Even weirder: She ended up staying for the whole meeting after all! The second thing she announced at the beginning of the meeting was that she had had a private meeting earlier that day with a representative of the Latino community who expressed that they felt excluded from the survey. Two things: One, since we had an after care committee, we should have been notified of the meeting. We were not. Second, and much larger, she proved to everybody how she was truly ignoring the entire process. We had translated the survey into Spanish and received several Spanish surveys back. When we told her this, the only thing we got was a blank stare.
Unilocal cutting me off. More at

A few years ago, my husband and I first visited Joaquin Miller on a parent volunteer led tour of the school. We were pretty happy with the private school our then-​preschooler was attending and were considering keeping him there through elementary school. Our primary concerns about public school were mostly about class size and colored by negative stories then in the news about the financial woes and generally poor performance of schools in the OUSD — concerns that were quickly dispelled upon learning more about Joaquin Miller and enrolling our kids there.
Right off the bat, we were immediately struck not only by the bright hallways and cheery classrooms decorated with student art projects, but also by the intelligence and passion shared by the teacher and parent guide we met that day. We saw parent volunteers and aides helping out in the classrooms, and kids who looked happy and engaged. Lessons were creatively approached and students’ individual talents and needs were respected and addressed.
We saw that this was a place where everyone involved was working together to create a vibrant, supportive community where kids learn and thrive — and that our whole family might benefit from getting to know our neighbors better (not always an easy trick in the hills).
Now, we have two kids doing great at Joaquin Miller, and we continue to be impressed by the staff and the dedication of the parents to contribute the success of the school. JM has an impressive library and computer lab, Khadra and African dance, after-​school enrichment programs, and phys-​ed and music classes, supported by the PTA. The multicultural education though the Living history program is especially terrific.
We love this school and would recommend it to anyone in the neighborhood.
The JM website has more info on academics, parent involvement, and school performance. Unilocal!has the wrong school office phone number listed: it is (510) 531‑6688.