Desert Ridge Academy

Desert Ridge Academy is a reasonably sized middle-grades school in Indio, California, operated by Desert Sands Unified. The school serves 962 students in grades 6 through 8. By comparison, California's public schools average about 659 students each, so Desert Ridge Academy sits 46% bigger than that benchmark.

Desert Sands Unified runs 34 schools in total, collectively educating 25,613 students. Desert Ridge Academy is one of those campuses.

On the student-mix side, Desert Ridge Academy shows that 85% of students identify as Hispanic, making the school strongly Hispanic-majority; the rest consists of 8% White, 3% multiracial. The wider county runs roughly 51% Hispanic, putting the school's mix considerably more Hispanic than the area baseline.

Looking at school resources, Desert Ridge Academy logs 41 full-time-equivalent teachers, putting the student-to-teacher ratio at about 23.6:1. That figure is higher than the state norm's 20.7:1 average. About 81% of enrolled students meet the income threshold for free or reduced-price lunch, a number frequently used as a low-income enrollment indicator.

With demographic context factored in, Desert Ridge Academy sits in the middle band of the BeatsExpectations distribution. Schools with this campus's student mix typically land near 30.9%; this one delivers 19.3%.

In the surrounding community, ACS estimates for Riverside County put the typical household earns roughly $93,074 per year, roughly 26% of adults have completed at least a four-year degree, and census figures put the poverty rate at about 8%. Across Riverside County's 543 public schools (combined enrollment of about 424,872 students), Desert Ridge Academy is one campus in the mix.

Shadow Hills High is the nearest neighboring public school, about 0.2 miles from this campus. Counting just inside five miles, 8 other public schools cluster around Desert Ridge Academy. On composite proficiency, Desert Ridge Academy comes 7th of 7 in the immediate cluster, behind the nearby-schools average of 36.9%.

The school occupies a small-town site.

Over the past 7-year window. Over the past 7-year window, the student count shrank 32%: 1,407 students in 2018 compared to 962 in 2025. The student-to-teacher ratio narrowed from 28.6:1 in 2018 to 23.6:1 today.

On the community side, the feed for Desert Ridge Academy typically covers school events, parent volunteer needs, and clubs. The community welcomes input from current and former families.