Bud Carson Middle

Bud Carson Middle is an average-sized junior high in Hawthorne, California, operated by Hawthorne. The school educates 601 students in grades 6 through 8.

Hawthorne comprises 11 schools with combined enrollment of 6,904 students; Bud Carson Middle is among them.

In terms of who attends, Bud Carson Middle logs that Hispanic students make up the majority at 64%; the rest breaks down as 31% Black, 2% multiracial. By comparison, Los Angeles County as a whole is about 48% Hispanic, so the school skews noticeably more Hispanic than its surroundings.

Looking at school resources, Staff filings list 25 full-time-equivalent teachers, which works out to roughly 23.9:1 students per teacher. The state averages around 20.7:1, so this campus is higher than the state norm typical. Roughly 95% of students at Bud Carson Middle qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, which schools and policymakers use as a rough income-mix signal. Set against Los Angeles County (around 70%), the school's rate is meaningfully above typical.

On a residual basis (actual vs predicted given the student mix), Bud Carson Middle performs roughly as the BeatsExpectations model predicts for a school with this FRL share. The predicted value is around 23.2%, the actual is 31.2%, a residual of +8.0 points.

Around the school, ACS estimates for Los Angeles County put the typical household earns roughly $90,112 per year, 36% of adults hold a bachelor's degree or higher, and the poverty rate sits near 10%. In all, Los Angeles County runs 2244 public schools (combined enrollment of about 1,265,907 students), of which Bud Carson Middle is one.

Zela Davis is the nearest neighboring public school, about 0.3 miles from this campus. 8 of the 8 nearest public schools sit inside a five-mile radius. Ranking that nearby cluster on reported proficiency puts Bud Carson Middle at 5th of 7; the average score across the group is 31.7%.

Geographically, the school is in a commuter-belt area.

Over the past 7-year window. Looking back 7 years, enrollment at Bud Carson Middle has ticked down 9%, going from 661 students in 2018 to 601 in 2025. Class-load math has widened: from 19.7:1 in 2018 to 23.9:1 in 2025.

On the community side, the feed for Bud Carson Middle typically covers enrollment questions, classroom assignments, and PTA news. Members of the school community can share what they know.