Martin Luther King Elementary

Martin Luther King Elementary is an elementary-level community of close-knit scale in Compton, California, run under Compton Unified, instructing 336 students in grades K through 6. By comparison, California's public schools average about 465 students each, so Martin Luther King Elementary sits 28% below that benchmark.

Within Compton Unified, which oversees 36 schools and 16,304 students, Martin Luther King Elementary is one campus in the system.

On demographics, Martin Luther King Elementary reports that the student body is overwhelmingly Hispanic (81%); the rest consists of 18% Black. By comparison, Los Angeles County as a whole is about 48% Hispanic, so the school skews meaningfully more Hispanic than its surroundings.

On the income-and-resources front, Martin Luther King Elementary shows 14 full-time-equivalent teachers, putting the student-to-teacher ratio at about 24.1:1. The state averages around 22.3:1, so this campus is higher than the state norm typical. An estimated 91% of students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, often used as a Title I proxy. That share is above Los Angeles County's rate of about 70%.

After controlling for student poverty, Martin Luther King Elementary sits in the middle band of the BeatsExpectations distribution. Schools with this campus's student mix typically land near 25.2%; this one delivers 34.5%.

Zooming out to the county, 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 roughly 10% of residents live below the federal poverty line. In all, Los Angeles County runs 2244 public schools (combined enrollment of about 1,265,907 students), of which Martin Luther King Elementary is one.

Bunche Middle is the nearest neighboring public school, about 0.2 miles from this campus. Counting just inside five miles, 8 other public schools cluster around Martin Luther King Elementary. Ranking that nearby cluster on reported proficiency puts Martin Luther King Elementary at 5th of 7; the average score across the group is 48.3%.

Martin Luther King Elementary operates from a suburban location.

Over the past 7-year window. Looking back 7 years, enrollment at Martin Luther King Elementary has ticked down 42%, going from 582 students in 2018 to 336 in 2025. Class-load math has narrowed: from 27.7:1 in 2018 to 24.1:1 in 2025.

On this page, recent activity here tends to focus on sports schedules, lunch menu changes, and school spirit week. Contributors range from current parents to recent graduates and teachers.