Don Bosco Technical Institute

This has been a good school the teachers are awesome. The food is amazing, brother hood is awesome everyone gets along, and our basketball team is great.

Amazing the best ever we on top, baseball teams good, brother hood is good everyone is nnice

As a student in this school, my overall experience in this school (so far) has been sort of interesting. I'm surprised to see that they're a lot of students finding their own passion, to work out with, and showing it off to their friends. However, there's some things this school can improve on and that's the hiring of the teachers.

Some instructors on the campus I see have been hired every year, then fired the very next day. I wonder why that might be the case, but the employment manager doesn't care about what they choose to become instructors. For example, there's one biology teacher, who has trouble with comprehending basic tasks, within that role of teaching their students. That former biology teacher enforces plenty of leisure in the students, making it a "grace" period. To be honest, he should of been let go after his misconduct a bit earlier when the signs are still visible.

What the administration can improve on is transparency. A supervisor should check on the students once per week anonymously to see if a student has learned anything, so that gives an insight to see whether the instructor is doing a great job. Furthermore, the administration ought to be careful who to hire before they make their final choice of doing it.

Do I recommend this school? Eh, it depends on the experience, but in summary, it's a good school in your district if you cannot find any near. At least, this school has technology majors no other school has in high school with religion implemented and rigor of school subjects.

It's a very good school and the lunches there are amazing. It is amazing how much they care about us as students.

While this school may have a good reputation in certain areas of academics, their staff and Administration would be rated a zero if you ask me.
They have no morals and so standards. Memo Gutierrez was one of the most unprofessional human beings I've ever met. In a school of this caliber, they have hired someone with absolutely no respect for parents, and to top it off, his rude and sarcastic attitude was completely unacceptable. I had a horrible experience with them all the way from the Principal down. I actually even spoke with a Board member, Martin Hairston and he was right there with the rest of them. Very disappointed and unhappy with my recent encounter at this school.

I graduated in 1964. Bosco Tech was run by the Salesians then. A bunch of Italians. They were men that may have tried their best, but they were mean people. I was in Cabinetmaking. Brother Reza was in charge and after I graduated he said he was sorry that he had not treated me better. He didn't like me. He, like Father Buja and his brother Brother Buja were frustrated men and always ready to put you down . Br. Buja especially liked to hit us and come up behind us and slap our ears with his hands cupped. Religious people? No, just people after all in funny clothes that made them feel above the rest of us. We were children that needed guidance. What they needed were women to set them straight and not beer. Them and other brushes with subsequent priests are what drove me away from the Roman Catholic church. Catholic, by the way, means Universal. Too many parish priests with girl friends.

I've always maintained and said, "There is nothing wrong with a church, any church, as long as it's empty". Find your God outside with the trees and the wind, don't listen to any of these fools. It always comes down to them asking for money. Remember the Reverend Little Ed in WKRP? Selling Last Supper steak knives. Or John the Baptist Shower Curtains.

Just believe half of what you see and none of what you hear and you'll be a lot happier and make it to the finish line in good order.

Don Schade escapee survivor.

PS I didn't cuss at them, but I sure what to.

My son was at Don Bosco Technical Institute from his freshman year to the end of his junior year. I transferred him to the local high school for his senior year.

PROs: Nice, safe atmosphere, cordial. Excellent technical facilities (for technical classes). Good guidance system, very good counseling for college preparation, test prep, & admissions. Good overall set of activities (sports, clubs, etc.) integrated into school life. Welcoming, nice sense of propriety on campus. Relatively small size (~900 students) offers a certain closeness among students and teachers. The formality and rigor (uniforms, protocol, etc.) are appealing to many parents and even some students.

CONs: Teaching quality varies greatly. Overall, the pedagogy is no better than the average public high school. Additionally, of course, the tuition. The relatively small size can be a drawback, some facilities and opportunities are limited compared to larger schools. And despite the small overall population, the class sizes are no smaller than typical high schools. (~30 students or so)

CONs (continued): extra fees are everywhere. Lab fees, lab equipment, textbooks, and so forth - even bubble sheets for multiple-choice tests. Many required activities for parents.
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The faculty and administration are much more close-knit than in larger, public schools. The opportunity to delve into several different technical areas (chemical/materials, electrical/computer, media arts, civil, etc.) is intriguing. However, students are required to decide the technical major in the freshman year, a hefty decision for the average 14-year-old.

Some of the teaching is quite good. A couple of my son's mathematics teachers were clear and organized. He liked the personal touch of the guidance counselors. One particular religion instructor was extraordinary.

The music program, though small, was quite nice. My son started from scratch, they taught him quite a bit, and he got a lot of experience that was very rewarding.

On the other hand, one English teacher was baffling. All the students to whom I spoke were confused about what he wanted, how the work was supposed to be done, and the grading system was opaque. Intro to computer science was a horrible disaster. The teacher babbled and told stories, sprinkled with textbook examples for the whole first semester. Most of the students had no experience in the topic and were bored, deeply confused, and very anxious. While that teacher is no longer there, the course was a nerve-racking mess for both students and parents. Students were far behind at the follow-up course, and since this was an introduction, it was a big turnoff to the topic.

The chemistry class was another bizarre episode. The teacher went into a variety of topics, at times in depth, that were not really essential for high school chemistry. Other topics were dragged out excessively. Amazingly, they did just four laboratories the entire year! (And only two of them were "real", quantitative laboratory experiences.) A typical chemistry teacher would do one or two a month.

The class spent an inordinate amount of time in their "science project", a sort of annual science fair that most students are required to do. While this is "science" exposure, it is rarely the required high school chemistry.

As a result, the students covered roughly half the standard material. If Bosco students from regular chemistry took the California state test in chemistry, they would be bewildered at the entire second half of the test.

I finally brought these matters to the attention of administration. They listened cordially, and clearly had no idea that the chemistry teacher never taught acids & bases, nuclear chemistry, and did a very cursory job on other fundamentals (stoichiometry, gas laws, basic labs). (I was told that such topics were for "honor students"!!)

The principal, in his patronizing way, claimed that the AP students' performance was exemplary. He doesn't acknowledge that DBTI hand-picks the best students for such courses, who are often able to succeed DESPITE the teacher (as conversations with several students confirmed.)

In fairness, the school employs the minimum staff to keep tuition down. Thus science teachers, overburdened with classes, do few labs. Department heads, while conscientious and talented, are too busy to monitor such situations.

I was not willing to pay another full year of tuition for more experiences like these. I transferred him into our local high school, he did fine there, and now is at the college of his choice.
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Summary: this would be a good school to consider for a certain type of student. For a boy (who doesn't mind a school with no girls) who clearly has a technical inclination, leaning toward a specialty, this could be a good place. Do not have high expectations for standard teaching. Meanwhile, give a good look to your local (free) public high school.

My son attended Bosco for 2 years. Complete money grab. You will get a better education at a Charter school and save yourself bucket loads of money. They have unqualified teachers and poor administration. The P.E. Teacher will suddenly become the Art Teacher then the Science Teacher then the Counselor then the Vice Principal all in one semester. Seriously, it might have been a good school many decades ago but that is definitely not the case now. Just sharing my opinion.

I attended a basketball game at Bosco Tech in Rosemead, CA on 12/20/2016. It had been many years since I saw my last basketball game there. The Bosco Tech Tigers lost to the visiting Xavier College of Australia by a score of 61-46. Parking and entry to the game were both free. There were no programs. Plus, I took photos.

It's really hard to rate educational institutions because pretty much half of the experience depends on the teachers and staff and the other half depends all on the individual student.

Meaning, it would be unfair for someone to give a school a low rating if they were never into it and just half-assed it the whole time.

I graduated from DBTI in 2003 in Materials Science, which was probably the last graduating class in which this school was still decent. But even then, the school had too many severe flaws. As with many private schools, this school always seemed to be run like a business rather than a school. I felt like I could pretty much do whatever I wanted all the time, get away with things and such, and as long as my parents kept writing the checks, then the school was okay with me. It always felt like the school cared about my parent$' well-being rather than my own.

The teachers consisted from great, intelligent people (word to the English Dept., M.S.) to disturbed head-cases, to coaches clearly doing the school a favor.

This is also one of those high school that is way too gung-ho about the school's sports teams and the Athletic Department. Many of the teachers HEAVILY favored athletes, which I always found pretty comical since the teams (except for track/CC) were always pretty bad. And then that led to the school dumping all it's money into a stadium and renovations for the baseball field and other unnecessary junk. It basically bankrupted the school, ending the school's signature 5-year college program and caused several other significant cuts.

I mainly just sit back and laugh at the mess now. And I'm glad I graduated from there at the perfect time, before the school went to shit.

I don't know how much longer it's going to last, but when I went there it was a male-only high school, which was frustrating for any teenage male like myself, but yeah, in the end I guess it was a good thing. There weren't any girls for the guys to fight over or get all stupidly macho about, and because of this, and the fact that the school's student population is on the small side, the majority of students got along really well. I made a lot of good friends while I was there and there were rarely any fights or drama or big scandals or anything like that. It always felt like a safe place to be. The only time any of my friends or I ever half-joked about someone maybe wanting to pull off a Columbine, it was about a teacher and not a student. But of course, the lack of girls around all the time will damage your girl-communication skills once you get to college. I know.

So if this was around 1999, I would say "Yeah, you should maybe send your kid here," but this is 2008 and the school is much worse off now than it was when I was there, so I would say "Keep your kid away from this school. Send him to a public school."