School History
John Sutter Elementary School is located on the southern border of the Santa Clara Unified School District. Sutter occupies a 10.7acre site originally owned by the Woodhams family in 1850. The school was constructed in 1959. Single-family homes make up approximately three-fourths of the dwellings in the attendance area, and most of the students live in the surrounding neighborhoods. The classrooms, the office, multipurpose room, play structures and blacktopswere modernized in summer of 2003 and 2019-2022. Sutter enjoys students who come from many cultural backgrounds and speak many languages.
Besides being known in the Santa Clara community as a close knit community and high performing school it is one of two schools in our school district that are computer immersion schools. The computer immersion program began in 2017-2018 school year.
Santa Clara Unified School District and Sutter Elementary School has a partnership with Code To The Future, the nation’s leading computer science program for magnet and theme-based schools. Students at Sutter Elementary School have the opportunity to learn fundamentals of computer coding as part of their daily curriculum. Through 21st Century literacy, students develop critical thinking, creativity, communication, and collaboration skills.
The partnership allows teachers to engage students in block and text-based coding activities to enhance their educational experiences through computer science. Students will have another avenue to apply problem-solving, team building, and presentation skills as they collaborate and share their thinking process with peers. This is another district commitment to computer science programming as the State of California rolls out the new computer science standards.
Sutter Elementary Schools continues to offer the same, outstanding instruction in reading, writing, math, science, social studies, music, and physical education, all of which are foundational content to our students. With the addition of computer immersion we are giving our students another avenue of learning.
Besides academics, Sutter School fosters independent, socially conscious, lifelong learners. Sutter School utilizes Positive Behavioral Intervention of Support System For Behavior. These skills include effort, caring, motivation, perseverance, teamwork, problem solving, confidence, responsibility, initiative, and common sense. All classes utilize the "3 B's-- Be respectful, Be responsible, and Be safe." The PBIS Leadership Team which consists of teachers, administration, and school community make a school and classroom behavior matrix which is posted all over campus. Then the PBIS leadership team teach the matrix to all students and support staff throughout the school year. The PBIS leadership team review data on student behavior monthly to assist teachers on how to support students
The lessons taught enable students to utilize lifelong learning skills while participating in classroom meetings or when interacting with buddies in a cross-age reading program.