South Lake Middle School 655 West Yale Loop, Irvine, CA 92614

"I had a bad, and stressful time here at South Lake and I don't think it would be the best school to attend. First off, the homework system seems pretty unorganized. It's almost as if the teachers have no communication whatsoever when it comes to balancing the load of homework that us students receive. I've had many experiences where I would have an important project or test that I would have most of my focus on during the week, but then my attention would be shifted to one teacher giving a workload of normal homework. For example from my experiences, I once had a giant English test that I needed to get a high score on to improve my grade. I spent most of my time studying for that while trying to do my other homework quickly, but all of a sudden my Math teacher gives me an 6 page packet of math problems (both the front and back pages of each piece of paper). I felt completely overwhelmed and (this may not affect other people but...) added with the stress that I didn't have enough time to complete it while getting the right amount of sleep I need (because of extracurricular activities). Second, at the end of the year I felt that the teachers were rushing us to finish the subjects that they needed to teach us. For example from another one of my experiences, we had only three weeks left of school (plus finals) but my English teacher decided that we were going to read one more book for our last unit. Throughout that whole unit, everything seemed rushed and it seemed like projects, that we would do if we had the time, were being left out. It put a toll on me, as I was struggling to prepare for finals plus learning all this new information in a short span of time. Finally, the last problem with this school was the staff. The vice-principal and some teachers were pretty rude towards students. Sometimes for me, it was hard to communicate to some teachers for help on homework, studying, or extra credit to improve my grades. I also felt like the staff kept blaming us students on problems that they don't even try to fix themselves. They would just give us a long lesson on their motto "Take care of yourself. Take care of others. Take care of our school." without doing anything to actually stop the problem. There was also a problem where some of my friends and I felt a bit unsafe on campus because of the many fights and bullying that would occur during lunch, snack, after school, or even in class. The school also, always seemed to complain about our school having a trash problem (which we did). But as I looked around one day after the problem was addressed, it was because kids were taking perfectly normal food and throwing it around. As I watched this, no one from the staff team seemed to stop it either. There was even an incident where a half-eaten pizza was thrown at one of my friends. When I looked around for an adult, I saw the janitor just staring at us but not doing anything to stop this behavior. The only time I did see him try to stop it was when my friends and I where throwing trash at each other that we would clean up later. He came up to us, furiously, and told us to clean it up right away. We did, but when I looked back towards him staring at the many other kids throwing trash, he did nothing. It seemed as though we were the only kids that were caught (and it was our first and only time doing this type of behavior as well). I hope that the school can take all this into consideration and the many problems that other people have announced here."

"i went to this school and it wasn't as good as said. the lunch area was dirty, the food had bugs in it, the staff was somewhat decent yet they weren't good with discipline. the principle is an awful one and doesn't control the students. i had a problem with the school and she responded "well your never here so" the students sometimes bring things that arent appropriate to even think about bringing. the principle did nothing about that. would i attend this school again? absolutely not however, some teachers were very respectful and kind. others? not so much."

"Im a 7th grader who wants to be anonymous. I go to this school and honstly if your somebody who isnt that popular and not cool or rich dont go here. You will be bullied and "roasted" to the point where you dont want to even go to school. The teachers there arent even that nice.. The assistance principal will yell at you and make you pick up trash for no reason. There have been multiple fights during time ive been here and it doesnt even seem like they are trying to prevent them. Ive been punched multiple times here. I do not feel safe here at all. Sure its a good school for learning but you cant really learn because of the people.-- Im now in eight grade and this school has gotten worse girls here dont even wear clothes, some show up just in bras, meanwhile i wore a pair of sweat pants and a sweater and got dress coded. does that even make sense? i had a severe case of bullying here and no matter how many times i talked to the principle she did nothing at all. the security guard even fist bumped the girl for breaking my phone! ive been thrown down the stairs and the teachers are evil. my math teacher basically bullies me and makes me feel less than everyone in the class. this school talks about take care of each other, yourself, and the school? yeah no. they dont care about you or your problems or your life. this school is messed up, unless you want to be depressed or hate school dont go here."

"I find this place...odd, some staff is amazing! But others are completely horrible. I've met the school campus helper and he didn't seem to care about students at all! I asked him if I could go to the Lost 'n Found to look for my favorite sweater (Which was past down for a generation) And he just said it's probably in the trash thrown away, awfully rude, and the only decent teachers I see that actually care about their students are Mr. Leavey, Mrs. Le, and Coach Doan. The others they look like they don't enjoy their job or something since usually they show favoritism and some of the staff are putting up a worse job at doing gossip and being a "role model" for the students. Plus the staff themselves doesn't seem to care if people use foul language and they'd just bring it up in the next announcement, plus schedules are so confusing, they don't exactly show where you need to go, Teachers are awfully silent and don't want to even help a student and sometimes I wonder if they need hearing aids because some just walk past me while I yell their name and they still don't come over, the reason I even came here is because my elementary friends came over and my parents and I decided to pay a visit and I ended getting enrolled, plus we had the proper paperwork yet we still had difficulties getting into the school and I had to miss out 3 weeks of school and I never got to make it up, Teachers don't help you with late work or even let you turn it in at all unless your talking about Mrs. Hanna who is a great teacher but the "role models" of the school write all sorts of horrible things on school property and I just feel bad for the good teachers who just get all this negativity from their students, I mean, kids learn more about gossip than the classrooms, i'd rather go back to Westpark than this school."

"I really don't like this school. Teachers suck, students are incredibly toxic. It makes me sad that I heard this school used to be good but not anymore I guess. If hell exists I imagine it to be something like this but in a really poor neighborhood and with nicer teachers."