Washington Open Elementary School

Love it!!!

I am a former student of this school, and was a member of the first graduating class since it became a completely separate school from West wood back in 1997. Amazingly, few of my former teachers are still there!
This school is amazing! The teachers care just as much as the parents. And to be a parent of a student here, you HAVE to care. You must first enter your child into a lottery to get in, but once one of your children get in, so do the siblings, and once your children are in, you must complete 4 hours of volunteer work on campus every week. That means that your child’s teacher has a team of 30+ parents helping to teach the class. Every student’s needs are recognized and every child is pushed to do their best.
What also stands out are the amount of experience your child will get here. When I was a student, we went on multiple field trips a month. Trips included camping, museums, factory tours, local businesses, and parks. What is also wonderful is that the classmates your child has, will become life long friends. Recently a classmate’s parent died, and the whole class came to the memorial. She wasn’t just some kids mom, she was a teacher to all of us due to her required volunteer work in the classroom.
If you want a strong community full of people who care in your child’s life, you need to try to get them in this school.

I went there and I’ve always sworn that if I have kids they’ll go there. It’s an incredible environment to learn and an incredible and successful concept for an Elementary School.
The teachers are awesome, several are still there from when I went more than twenty-​five years ago, and a couple are folks I went to school with! That shows the kind of dedication and love that those involved with the programme feel.
I’ve always kept up with news on Washington Open, which was Westwood Open when I was there. The website is really informative and I’m glad that it’s available to the public.
Plus, I’m told that there are at least a few third generation Open Kids (the first two being during the Westwood years). I really find that amazing!

I went to the previous version of Washington Open, when it was half of Westwood Elementary. This is a really fabulous school to go to, you really luck out if you get into it. My mom spent the night on a cot to enroll me, I guess you dont have to do that anymore. The teachers here are allowed an incredible amount of leeway in creative teaching, they aren’t burnt out like so many other teachers because they have so much help from the parents. Imagine having tutoring available every day for every student, and arts and crafts, cooking etc every friday all led by parents. The amount of money the school had was kind of astounding, the community is so supportive of the school. We were able to go off campus to a local park for lunch once a week, the whole school! and we had field trips almost every week, including ones that lasted for days at a time.
After I went here, I continued in public education at the middle school next door, Buchser, which is a pretty awful place. It made me realize how lucky I was to have been able to go to an incredible public elementary.

Washington Elementary is a unique and cool school. Its 1 ot the 2 open enrollment schools in the Santa Clara school district (the other being Milikin). Bascially, if you are in the school district there is a lottery to fill the open spots each year. Our son’s kindergarten year there were just under 30 open spots (siblings are automatic, so roughly half of the 60 kindergarten spots were already taken). And there were 100+ applicant for those spots… So some luck is envolved. If you don’t get in you can always try again for 1^st grade. Inany case, you mark down that you want to try to for Washington Elem. in January when you submit your preference for school, from there you should find out if your in or on the waiting list come April-​ish. We were actually on the waiting list but did get in.
The primary catalyst behind what makes the school unique is that it is a parent participation school. Each family is required ot put in 4 hours in school per week and take on additional out of school responsibilities. A coupl ethings come out of this.
1) The school has a ton of resources. Using parent’s skill sets, using their time to offload some of the teacher busy work, using their time in class covering work center allows the kids to work in smaller more focused groups. Simply put the kids get a lot of opportunities that a normal school just can’t do.
2) Almost like a sports team fan, the more time the parent put in the more envolved/​invested they become. The parent base is almost overboard in their love for the school and many many parent are putting in well more then the minimum required time into the school. This feeds back into point 1, but it also creates a sense of community, much like a church. You get to know the other parent, the other kids… it is cool.
Let me finish by saying, I never wanted to be the parent that was in my kids business, in their school. I had friends whos parents were at the school and they hated it. But here its different because every parent is in the school (well, at least that is what I tell myself).