Craig Williams Elementary School is located in the City of Lakewood and serves a student body of approximately 755 students. The school facility includes, 32 regular education classrooms, a multipurpose room, a newly renovated library with over 12,000 books, two computer labs; one with 20 stations and one with 42 stations, psychologist’s office, speech and guidance room, special education classroom, and a Title I teacher room. All classrooms have access to the internet. The school is built around a large grassy play area, which provides a park like setting for children to play. A covered lunch area also provides a shady spot for eating lunch or reading books at recess time.

Craig Williams School focuses on teaching the content standards in the areas of language arts, mathematics, social studies, science, and health. Students are actively involved with independent reading using the Accelerated Reader program. This reading program is a system that tracks students reading growth and encourages students to read at their highest level. A similar system, Accelerated Math, allows every student to work to his/her highest potential in mathematics.

Craig Williams serves students in grades K-6. Recognizing that student attendance and academic excellence go hand in hand, it is important to reinforce that students attend school everyday. The average daily attendance rate at the school was 96.13 percent during the prior school year. Student enrollment is made up of a variety of ethnic backgrounds. The ethnic make-up of the school includes the following: American Indian-1 percent, Asian-5 percent, Pacific Islander-1 percent, Filipino-3 percent, Hispanic 61- percent, African-American-19 percent, Caucasian-8 percent and multiple ethicities-3 percent.

The school has 32 regular education teachers, one special education teacher, one Title I teacher, and a Principal. Other personnel serving the school include a psychologist, two health assistants, a case manager, a guidance intern, and a speech and language therapist. All staff members meet the credential requirements of the State of California.

Staff development activities are essential for maintaining excellence in education for every student. That is why the District provided more than 300 hours of staff development activities for teachers and classified staff. The emphasis in staff development has been in technology, reading strategies, analyzing data and using it to drive instruction. One hundred percent of the teachers at the school took advantage of district or outside staff development offerings. In addition, we are committed to working with parents so they can help their children. In order to meet this commitment we offer parent workshops and family nights to encourage parents to play an active role in their student’s education.