La Mesa Arts Academy

La Mesa Arts Academy operates as a roomy 6-8 campus in La Mesa, California, operated by La Mesa-Spring Valley. Current enrollment sits at 1,059 students spanning grades 5 through 8. By comparison, California's public schools average about 659 students each, so La Mesa Arts Academy sits 61% larger than that benchmark.

Within La Mesa-Spring Valley, which oversees 22 schools and 10,491 students, La Mesa Arts Academy is one campus in the system.

For racial and ethnic makeup, La Mesa Arts Academy records that the largest single group is White at 39%, but no single group is in the majority. Beyond that, the school reports 38% Hispanic, 11% multiracial, 6% Asian, 6% Black. The wider county runs roughly 48% White, putting the school's mix meaningfully less White than the area baseline.

On the resource side, Staff filings list 51 full-time-equivalent teachers, which works out to roughly 20.7:1 students per teacher. That tracks the state average closely. About 46% of enrolled students meet the income threshold for free or reduced-price lunch, often used as a Title I proxy.

After controlling for student poverty, La Mesa Arts Academy performs roughly as the BeatsExpectations model predicts for a school with this FRL share. The predicted value is around 51.9%, the actual is 63.5%, a residual of +11.6 points.

Zooming out to the county, the surrounding county (San Diego County) records that median household income runs about $106,268, about 43% of the adult population holds a bachelor's degree or above, and census figures put the poverty rate at about 7%. La Mesa Arts Academy is one of 766 public schools in San Diego County (combined enrollment of about 467,437 students).

Nearest neighbor: La Mesa Dale Elementary, around 0.2 miles off. 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), La Mesa Arts Academy ranks 1st on composite proficiency, above the local average of 37.6%.

The campus sits in a suburban setting.

Over the past 7-year window. La Mesa Arts Academy's enrollment has declined 4% since 2018, when it stood at 1,102 (now 1,059). The White share of enrollment contracted from 50% to 39% over that span. Class-load math has pulled in: from 25.8:1 in 2018 to 20.7:1 in 2025.

Inside the community feed, members of the La Mesa Arts Academy community share and discuss sports schedules, lunch menu changes, and school spirit week. Anyone with firsthand experience at this school can post or comment.