Burbank's schools are good only if your child falls into one of their neat little boxes.General ed is decent, better than LAUSD, Special Ed is good as long as your child has a diagnosis of a severe learning disability. Gifted kids also have a program. If however, your child is struggling, without a diagnosis, or a diagnosis of a non behavioral learning disability such as ADD (ADHD-i), look elswhere.

My younger son is High Functioning Autistic, and he has been placed in a wonderful program within the school district. He is provided with all the accommodations he needs, and he is progressing wonderfully. The staff at his school is amazing, and I am very pleased with their professionalism, kindness, problem solving, communication, and the quality of teachers they have in the special education programs. I know that one of the Middle Schools has a program designed for ASD specifically. There is not as much support for ASD in the Elementary schools though.

My son was classified as highly gifted in the 4th grade, and he started in the Burbank school system in 7th grade. He has been reading and understanding Quantum Physics since he was 10. (I don't post new pics of my kids on the net, but the little one in my avatar is my little physicist back in '97) He was not placed into any Gifted classes until the 8th grade after I had to go to the Deputy superintendent to get them to recognize his gifted status from the LAUSD district. Even so, because of his ADHD-i, he was not getting good enough grades, so they only placed him in one gifted class, instead of having all of his classes being gifted. In addition, they refused him all special ed services and a 504 plan because he was getting "C's" in the regular classes. The schools refused to take into account that he was gifted and that he was not performing up to his own expected level of achievement. They instead, in violation of IDEA, compared him to the arbitrary general standard of other NON-gifted students.

I also wanted to mention that as a result of the lack of help in the Middle School my son was going to, I too have taken him out of the Burbank system and enrolled him in an online school. I have chosen Insight Schools of California over CAVA though because they have more focus on the social needs of the kids. The only detriment is that they only serve 9-12 grades while CAVA is k-12. I also like the fact that Insight provides the child with a laptop that can be taken with them on trips if need be. I also found their support system to be superior to CAVA.