St Nicholas Elementary School

We love St. Nicholas Catholic School! The academics are fantastic; the school is a Blue Ribbon School! The classes all have dedicated aides, so the teacher student ratio is something around 1:12, so there's a lot of small group learning and individualized attention. Even in the lower grades the kids are doing cross-disciplinary projects. They have a reading specialist for the lower grades who is just amazing. I love so many of the teachers. There's also music, art, and physical education, two fantastic science teachers with a great science lab, and a dedicated technology teacher with a brand-new technology center. They've just gone to 1:1 tablets for all grades. The academic focus really pays off - St. Nicholas kids go to terrific high schools (and ultimately colleges), with something like a 99%+ acceptance rate at St. Francis and something similar at Bellarmine College Prep, as well as many of the other Catholic High schools in the area. In addition to academics, St. Nicholas is an amazing community. There's a real emphasis on loving one another. Their buddy system (where a kindergartener is paired with a 4th grader, they will be buddies for the next 4 years) really fosters bonds between upper & lower grades from the beginning. They have a program for the older kids to help manage playground conflict. The kids regularly participate in community service projects. They all know one another; the big kids are really kind and really do know the little ones. And when we go to the grocery store or downtown Los Altos or Mountain View, and we see St. Nicholas folks - and we say hello, and sometimes stop and talk.