Half Moon Bay High School

Very positive. The students are great, the staff is wonderful and it’s a great place to send your child.

This school has gotten better since the other ratings, and now has a plethora of AP classes, and I feel more than challenged. Some of Admin and Teachers do the best they can with the little the have (funding is always an issue, the computers in the labs still run Windows XP for Christ's sake!) but some teachers are so protected by their unions that they don't have to teach well and often don't as a consequence of being at the top of the totem pole thanks to working there for years. If that didn't make sense, just know that newer better teachers are more likely to get fired because they are newer. There is definitely a huge gap between the students in Advanced Placement classes and those in regular classes and I know very few of those on the other side. This gap is predominantly a socio-economic one, with richer families having their students take more challenging courses, while those less fortunate simply look to graduate and often work part-time after school. Those on the advanced side are getting test scores just as high as students at SI or MA, but they are offset by the other 60% of the school who preforms at or below average.

As a whole, HMBHS does not compare to other schools in the Bay Area, such as Saint Ignatius, or Menlo-Atherton. HMBHS will never be a badge of exclusive honor, because its very composition, identity and mission work against that. It's intended to be accessible and to try and counter, and change, the fact that in the United States, according to a study from a few years ago, fewer than 10% of children from families in the bottom quartile of income are likely to get a college diploma by the age of 24, while more than 70% of families from the top quartile are. HMBHS functions primarily to get students who weren't originally intent on going to college into a two-year community college. That's not to say that if you have plans to go to a UC that you are unable to. Many, many alumni have gone onto prestigious universities - UC Berkely, UCLA, UCSB, Northwestern, U-Penn, USC, I could go on... - it just takes some extra work to set yourself apart from the rest and use tools that are meant for other purposes to get the job done. At HMBHS, success won't be handed to you, you have to work for it, which in a way is even better.

I gave this review a 5/5 because I respect the mission. However, I would probably give it a 4/5, but didn't because clearly the school could use a better rep. While the mission is a noble one, the school survives because of teachers who put in 110%, but they are increasingly transferring to other districts where the pay is higher, among other reasons. Hadley, Davis, Lusear, and many others have been forced to use HMBHS as a stepping stone onto institutions which pay more for their hard work. Just this semester, the principle, superintendent and his assistant all stepped down from their positions for varying reasons, chiefly low pay and the annoying union who stabs its associates in the back. This forces the high school to hire young guns who can sometimes be amazing teachers who are more able to relate to their students as a result of their youth (Stagg, Svendsen, Centoni) but often times leads to disasters (Poma, Brown and the librarian who threw away books (!!!)) who, thankfully, have all been removed.

At the end of the day, the school is crippled by low funds, an annoying union and a fast teacher turn-over rate, but is held together by the alumni donations (in the form of some unprecedented sports facilities), amazing, but under-represented teachers and a very strong parent foundation that somehow manages to keep things moving forward.

Hope this helps someone!