Colonel Mitchell Paige Middle

Colonel Mitchell Paige Middle operates as a low-enrollment 6-8 campus in La Quinta, California, operated by Desert Sands Unified. Current enrollment sits at 439 students spanning grades 6 through 8. That puts it 33% leaner than the typical public school in California, which averages around 659 students.

Within Desert Sands Unified, which oversees 34 schools and 25,613 students, Colonel Mitchell Paige Middle is one campus in the system.

On demographics, Colonel Mitchell Paige Middle lists that 69% of the student body identifies as Hispanic. Beyond that, the school logs 18% White, 4% multiracial, 4% Asian, 3% Black. That is considerably more Hispanic than the county at large, where the share is closer to 51%.

In terms of school funding signals, The school reports having 21 full-time-equivalent teachers, for a student-teacher ratio near 20.8:1. The state averages about 20.7:1, putting this campus right in line with peers. Roughly 84% of students at Colonel Mitchell Paige Middle qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, which schools and policymakers use as a rough income-mix signal. Set against Riverside County (around 74%), the school's rate is meaningfully above typical.

On a demographically-adjusted basis, Colonel Mitchell Paige Middle performs roughly as the BeatsExpectations model predicts for a school with this FRL share. The predicted value is around 29.4%, the actual is 19.5%, a residual of -9.9 points.

In the broader community, ACS estimates for Riverside County put the typical household earns roughly $93,074 per year, 26% of adults hold a bachelor's degree or higher, and the poverty rate sits near 8%. Colonel Mitchell Paige Middle is one of 543 public schools in Riverside County (combined enrollment of about 424,872 students).

Nearest neighbor: Horizon, around 0.1 miles off. Counting just inside five miles, 8 other public schools cluster around Colonel Mitchell Paige Middle. Ranking that nearby cluster on reported proficiency puts Colonel Mitchell Paige Middle at 7th of 7; the average score across the group is 47.3%.

Colonel Mitchell Paige Middle operates from a residential location.

Five-year trend. Looking back 7 years, enrollment at Colonel Mitchell Paige Middle has shrank 35%, going from 673 students in 2018 to 439 in 2025. The White share of enrollment edged down from 24% to 18% over that span. The student-to-teacher ratio tightened from 24.3:1 in 2018 to 20.8:1 today.

On the community side, members of the Colonel Mitchell Paige Middle community share and discuss sports schedules, lunch menu changes, and school spirit week. Anyone with firsthand experience at this school can post or comment.