Laurel Wood Elementary

Set in Salinas, California, Laurel Wood Elementary is a mid-sized K-5 school, overseen by Salinas City Elementary. It educates 417 students across grades K through 6.

Salinas City Elementary runs 15 schools in total, collectively educating 8,236 students. Laurel Wood Elementary is one of those campuses.

On demographics, Laurel Wood Elementary reports that 83% of students identify as Hispanic, making the school strongly Hispanic-majority. Other groups include 6% White, 6% Asian, 4% multiracial. By comparison, Monterey County as a whole is about 62% Hispanic, so the school skews noticeably more Hispanic than its surroundings.

Looking at the economic backdrop, Staff filings list 19 full-time-equivalent teachers, which works out to roughly 21.9:1 students per teacher. The state averages about 22.3:1, putting this campus right in line with peers. An estimated 60% of students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, a number frequently used as a low-income enrollment indicator. Set against Monterey County (around 76%), the school's rate is south of typical.

Adjusting for the school's free-and-reduced-lunch share, Laurel Wood Elementary falls in the UNDERPERFORMING tier of the BeatsExpectations residual. Given its student profile, a typical campus would land near 43.6%; this one comes in at 25.2%, -18.5 points off the demographic line.

In the broader community, the surrounding county (Monterey County) records that the typical household earns roughly $97,230 per year, roughly 28% of adults have completed at least a four-year degree, and census figures put the poverty rate at about 10%. Laurel Wood Elementary is one of 153 public schools in Monterey County (combined enrollment of about 73,845 students).

Nearest neighbor: Boronda Meadows, around 0.4 miles off. Within five miles, there are 8 other public schools. On composite proficiency, Laurel Wood Elementary comes 2nd of 4 in the immediate cluster, higher than the nearby-schools average of 24.1%.

The campus sits in a downtown setting.

Five-year trend. Over the past 7-year window, the student count decreased 14%: 484 students in 2018 compared to 417 in 2025. Class-load math has tightened: from 25.5:1 in 2018 to 21.9:1 in 2025.

On this page, members of the Laurel Wood Elementary community share and discuss open house dates, ride-share offers, and field-trip permission slips. Posting is open to anyone connected to the school.