John Muir Elementary School
Cause Area
- Children & Youth
- Education & Literacy
- Environment
- Race & Ethnicity
- Sports & Recreation
Location
2955 Claremont AvenueBerkeley, CA 94705 United StatesOrganization Information
Mission Statement
John Muir's mission is: to achieve academic excellence, promote personal growth, and celebrate the joy and beauty of nature, community, diversity, and learning.
We do this by providing our students with a complete education that covers the basic required curriculum, but also goes beyond that to provide instruction in gardening and nutrition, cooking, sports, dance, and music. Our library, field trips, and additional opportunities for recreation, art instruction, and further explorations in math and science offer our students a wealth of opportunities to learn about themselves and the world around them.
Description
John Muir Elementary School is a Title 1 school (serving many low-income students) and the smallest of the eleven elementary schools in the Berkeley Unified School District. We serve just under 250 students, kindergarten through fifth grade. We serve more disadvantaged students than the district average, with just over half of our students receiving a free or reduced-price lunch.
Diversity is among our core strengths: our student population is African-American (35%), white (25%), mixed race (23%), Latino (11%) and Asian (6%). Parents in our community speak more than 12 languages. Since our school hosts one of the region's premiere programs for the deaf and the hard of hearing, all students here are exposed to sign language.
We invite and support students from every background and offer a learning program that uses effective teaching to promote high achievement. In fact, John Muir met all of its growth targets for the 2009-2010 California Standards Test (CST) and once again received an API score above 800.