Erwin Elementary

Erwin Elementary is one of the mid-sized elementary schools in Van Nuys, California, run under Los Angeles Unified, with 580 students on its rolls from grades K through 5. That puts it 25% larger than the typical public school in California, which averages around 465 students.

Within Los Angeles Unified, which oversees 784 schools and 406,887 students, Erwin Elementary is one campus in the system.

For racial and ethnic makeup, Erwin Elementary logs that Hispanic students make up the majority at 59%; the rest looks like 31% White, 7% multiracial. That is meaningfully more Hispanic than the county at large, where the share is closer to 48%.

Looking at school resources, Staff filings list 28 full-time-equivalent teachers, which works out to roughly 20.7:1 students per teacher. That figure is tighter than the state norm's 22.3:1 average. An estimated 91% of students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, often used as a Title I proxy. That share is higher than Los Angeles County's rate of about 70%.

Adjusting for the school's free-and-reduced-lunch share, Erwin Elementary ranks in the top 10% of California public schools. The BeatsExpectations model, a per-state regression of composite proficiency on FRL share, predicts schools with this student profile to land around 26.0%; Erwin Elementary posts 43.1%, +17.1 points above that line.

In the surrounding community, community-level numbers for Los Angeles County indicate median household income runs about $90,112, 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 Erwin Elementary is one.

Ulysses S. Grant Senior High is the nearest neighboring public school, about 0.6 miles from this campus. 8 of the 8 nearest public schools sit inside a five-mile radius. Among the 7 schools in that immediate cluster with test data (this one included), Erwin Elementary ranks 3rd on composite proficiency, above the local average of 34.8%.

Geographically, the school is in an inner-city area.

Five-year trend. Erwin Elementary's enrollment has contracted 16% since 2018, when it stood at 694 (now 580). The student-to-teacher ratio narrowed from 23.1:1 in 2018 to 20.7:1 today.

In the discussion threads here, the page collects discussion, questions, and updates around science fair prep, picture-day reminders, and bus-route questions. Anyone with firsthand experience at this school can post or comment.