Fairlawn Elementary

Fairlawn Elementary is one of the big elementary campuss in Santa Maria, California, part of Santa Maria-Bonita, with 716 students on its rolls from grades K through 6. That puts it 54% above the typical public school in California, which averages around 465 students.

Santa Maria-Bonita runs 21 schools in total, collectively educating 17,408 students. Fairlawn Elementary is one of those campuses.

On the student-mix side, Fairlawn Elementary shows that 98% of students identify as Hispanic, making the school strongly Hispanic-majority. By comparison, Santa Barbara County as a whole is about 48% Hispanic, so the school skews noticeably more Hispanic than its surroundings.

On the income-and-resources front, Fairlawn Elementary lists 34 full-time-equivalent teachers, putting the student-to-teacher ratio at about 20.9:1. That figure is tighter than the state norm's 22.3:1 average. Around 98% of the student body qualifies for free or reduced-price meals, often used as a Title I proxy. Set against Santa Barbara County (around 68%), the school's rate is meaningfully above typical.

On a demographically-adjusted basis, Fairlawn Elementary performs roughly as the BeatsExpectations model predicts for a school with this FRL share. The predicted value is around 21.3%, the actual is 20.2%, a residual of -1.1 points.

Around the school, the surrounding county (Santa Barbara County) shows that the typical household earns roughly $98,161 per year, about 37% of the adult population holds a bachelor's degree or above, and the poverty rate sits near 9%. Fairlawn Elementary is one of 129 public schools in Santa Barbara County (combined enrollment of about 66,191 students).

The closest other public school is Bruce (Robert) Elementary, roughly 0.5 miles away. Counting just inside five miles, 8 other public schools cluster around Fairlawn Elementary. Ranking that nearby cluster on reported proficiency puts Fairlawn Elementary at 4th of 9; the average score across the group is 20.1%.

Fairlawn Elementary operates from a metropolitan location.

Five-year trend. Fairlawn Elementary's enrollment has declined 7% since 2018, when it stood at 771 (now 716). The student-to-teacher ratio narrowed from 24.5:1 in 2018 to 20.9:1 today.

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