Dana Elementary

Dana Elementary is an elementary-level community of reasonably sized scale in Nipomo, California, part of Lucia Mar Unified, hosting 612 students in grades K through 6. By comparison, California's public schools average about 465 students each, so Dana Elementary sits 32% bigger than that benchmark.

Within Lucia Mar Unified, which oversees 19 schools and 9,590 students, Dana Elementary is one campus in the system.

Looking at the student body, Dana Elementary reports that 68% of the student body identifies as Hispanic. Other groups include 26% White, 4% multiracial. The wider county runs roughly 25% Hispanic, putting the school's mix considerably more Hispanic than the area baseline.

On the income-and-resources front, Staff filings list 31 full-time-equivalent teachers, which works out to roughly 19.9:1 students per teacher. That figure is tighter than the state norm's 22.3:1 average. Around 77% of the student body qualifies for free or reduced-price meals, which schools and policymakers use as a rough income-mix signal. By comparison, San Luis Obispo County runs at roughly 54%, so the school's eligibility rate is meaningfully above the surrounding baseline.

With demographic context factored in, Dana Elementary sits in the middle band of the BeatsExpectations distribution. Schools with this campus's student mix typically land near 33.5%; this one delivers 33.6%.

In the surrounding community, census data for San Luis Obispo County shows median household earnings sit near $97,446, 40% of adults hold a bachelor's degree or higher, and the poverty rate sits near 6%. Across San Luis Obispo County's 83 public schools (combined enrollment of about 33,339 students), Dana Elementary is one campus in the mix.

Nearest neighbor: Lange (Dorothea) Elementary, around 1.3 miles off. Within five miles, there are 8 other public schools. Among the 9 schools in that immediate cluster with test data (this one included), Dana Elementary ranks 4th on composite proficiency, higher than the local average of 32.5%.

The campus sits in a town-based setting.

Five-year trend. Looking back 7 years, enrollment at Dana Elementary has stayed largely flat, going from 599 students in 2018 to 612 in 2025. Hispanic enrollment moved from 62% to 68% across the same window. The student-to-teacher ratio tightened from 23.5:1 in 2018 to 19.9:1 today.

Inside the community feed, members of the Dana Elementary community share and discuss open house dates, ride-share offers, and field-trip permission slips. Posting is open to anyone connected to the school.