Ernie Pyle Elementary School
14500 South Woodruff Ave.
Bellflower, CA 90706
562-804-6528
562-804-6530 fax
The facilities at Ernie Pyle Elementary School include 27 regular education classrooms, two special education classrooms, a multipurpose room that also serves as the school cafeteria, a parent volunteer room, a library, a primary lab, an upper grade lab, and a resource room.
Ernie Pyle serves 558 students. The attendance rate at the school was 96.29 percent during the prior school year. Student enrollment includes a variety of ethnic backgrounds: Asian 4 percent, Pacific Islander 2 percent, Filipino 4 percent, Hispanic 66 percent, African-American 16 percent, Caucasian 5 percent and multiple 3 percent.
Students at Ernie Pyle are held accountable to clear and high expectations that allow students to be fully engaged and take ownership of their learning. Teachers use a variety of instructional strategies that address many learning modalities within the core curriculum. Our goal is to provide a quality education that will allow our students to be life long learners who will be successful in their future years. Students are also given opportunities beyond the classroom setting to experience challenging and diverse learning experiences. These opportunities include library monitors, cafeteria workers and student council participation. A variety of intervention programs are available to help students achieve academically. GATE students receive differentiated instruction. Assemblies, student of the month, honor roll, perfect attendance, and “Proud Panthers” are used to positively reinforce student attendance, academic achievement and behavior. Our upper grade students also have the opportunity to participate in chorus and band which is provided by a district certificated teacher. An after school program called APPLE offers support with homework and enrichment activities for over 100 students grades in K - 6th, every day until 6:00 p.m. Some teachers also provide after school tutoring for students who need additional support in language arts or mathematics.
Other personnel serving the school include a psychologist, two health assistants, a guidance intern, a speech and language therapist, secretarial staff, and a full time community resource liaison. We have an open door policy that encourages parent involvement to help support our instruction. All staff meets the credential requirements of the State of California. Sixty five percent of the certificated staff have advanced degrees and all teachers have pursued course work beyond their bachelor’s degree.
Staff development activities are essential for maintaining a quality education program for students; therefore, the district provides more than 300 hours of staff development activities for teachers and classified staff. The teachers also provide staff development to their colleagues after attending staff developments put on by the district. District coaches in the area of language arts and mathematics help serve as mentors and provide demo lessons for our teachers. The emphasis of the staff development is on strategies that help to support academic achievement that will help close the achievement gap.
We believe that all students can achieve and strive to constantly meet the needs of all students.