Cottonwood Elementary

Cottonwood Elementary operates as a heavily attended primary school in Hesperia, California, operated by Hesperia Unified. Current enrollment sits at 868 students spanning grades K through 6. Enrollment runs roughly 87% larger than the state mean of about 465.

Across the 25 schools in Hesperia Unified (23,188 students total), Cottonwood Elementary accounts for its share of the district's footprint.

Demographically, Cottonwood Elementary records that 83% of students identify as Hispanic, making the school strongly Hispanic-majority. Other groups include 9% White, 6% Black. By comparison, San Bernardino County as a whole is about 55% Hispanic, so the school skews visibly more Hispanic than its surroundings.

On the income-and-resources front, Staff filings list 38 full-time-equivalent teachers, which works out to roughly 22.8:1 students per teacher. That tracks the state average closely. An estimated 84% of students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, which schools and policymakers use as a rough income-mix signal. Set against San Bernardino County (around 74%), the school's rate is north of typical.

Adjusting for the school's free-and-reduced-lunch share, Cottonwood Elementary is in the bottom 10% of California public schools. The BeatsExpectations model predicts schools with this FRL share to land around 29.3%; Cottonwood Elementary posts 14.3%, -15.0 points below that line.

Across the wider county, census data for San Bernardino County shows the typical household earns roughly $85,478 per year, roughly 23% of adults have completed at least a four-year degree, and roughly 11% of residents live below the federal poverty line. In all, San Bernardino County runs 583 public schools (combined enrollment of about 393,648 students), of which Cottonwood Elementary is one.

The closest other public school is Mojave River Academy - Rockview Park, roughly 1.3 miles away. Counting just inside five miles, 8 other public schools cluster around Cottonwood Elementary. Ranking that nearby cluster on reported proficiency puts Cottonwood Elementary at 6th of 6; the average score across the group is 28.2%.

The campus sits in a bedroom-community setting.

Trend over the last 7 years. Over the past 7-year window, the student count declined 3%: 891 students in 2018 compared to 868 in 2025. Over the same period, the Hispanic share ticked up from 65% to 83%. Class-load math has narrowed: from 24.8:1 in 2018 to 22.8:1 in 2025.

On this page, members of the Cottonwood Elementary community share and discuss fundraisers, lost-and-found posts, and report-card season. Anyone with firsthand experience at this school can post or comment.