John McCandless Charter

Located at 915 Rose Marie Ln., in Stockton, California, John McCandless Charter is a middle-of-the-pack K-5 school that enrolls 434 students (grades K through 8), overseen by Lincoln Unified.

John McCandless Charter is one of 13 schools operated by Lincoln Unified, a district that caters to 8,721 students overall.

Demographically, John McCandless Charter lists that the largest single group is Hispanic at 53%, but no single group is in the majority; the rest breaks down as 18% White, 11% multiracial, 10% Asian, 5% Black. That is meaningfully more Hispanic than the county at large, where the share is closer to 43%.

On the income-and-resources front, John McCandless Charter logs 21 full-time-equivalent teachers, putting the student-to-teacher ratio at about 20.5:1. That figure is tighter than the state norm's 22.3:1 average. Roughly 59% of students at John McCandless Charter qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, a commonly cited indicator of low-income enrollment.

After controlling for student poverty, John McCandless Charter performs roughly as the BeatsExpectations model predicts for a school with this FRL share. The predicted value is around 44.6%, the actual is 41.9%, a residual of -2.7 points.

Around the school, San Joaquin County reports that median household earnings sit near $92,179, about 23% of the adult population holds a bachelor's degree or above, and census figures put the poverty rate at about 10%. John McCandless Charter is one of 251 public schools in San Joaquin County (combined enrollment of about 153,026 students).

Nearest neighbor: Walton Development Center, around 0.5 miles off. Counting just inside five miles, 8 other public schools cluster around John McCandless Charter. On composite proficiency, John McCandless Charter comes 3rd of 8 in the immediate cluster, higher than the nearby-schools average of 39.2%.

The campus sits in a downtown setting. As a public charter, John McCandless Charter runs on public funding but with greater curricular and operational autonomy than a typical district school.

Over the past 7-year window. John McCandless Charter's enrollment has increased 19% since 2018, when it stood at 366 (now 434). Over the same period, the White share decreased from 34% to 18%. Class-load math has pulled in: from 26.1:1 in 2018 to 20.5:1 in 2025.

On allk12, members of the John McCandless Charter community share and discuss sports schedules, lunch menu changes, and school spirit week. Anyone with firsthand experience at this school can post or comment.