Mission Elementary

Mission Elementary, a tiny K-5 school in Soledad, California, part of Mission Union Elementary, serves 130 students, covering grades K through 8. Enrollment runs roughly 72% below the state mean of about 465.

Mission Elementary sits inside Mission Union Elementary, the local public-school operator responsible for the campus.

For racial and ethnic makeup, Mission Elementary shows that Hispanic students make up the majority at 72%; the rest comes out to 22% White, 5% Asian. The wider county runs roughly 62% Hispanic, putting the school's mix considerably more Hispanic than the area baseline.

On the income-and-resources front, On paper, Mission Elementary has 6 full-time-equivalent teachers, translating to a class-load average of around 21.7:1. The state averages about 22.3:1, putting this campus right in line with peers. An estimated 37% of students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, often used as a Title I proxy. By comparison, Monterey County runs at roughly 76%, so the school's eligibility rate is somewhat below the surrounding baseline.

Adjusting for the school's free-and-reduced-lunch share, On a poverty-adjusted basis, Mission Elementary sits in the bottom 10% statewide. Predicted proficiency from the FRL regression is roughly 57.9%; actual is 43.2%, a gap of -14.7 points.

Across the wider county, Monterey County reports that median household earnings sit near $97,230, about 28% of the adult population holds a bachelor's degree or above, and the poverty rate sits near 10%. Mission Elementary is one of 153 public schools in Monterey County (combined enrollment of about 73,845 students).

Soledad Transition Center is the nearest neighboring public school, about 3.4 miles from this campus. 8 of the 8 nearest public schools sit inside a five-mile radius. On composite proficiency, Mission Elementary comes 1st of 6 in the immediate cluster, ahead of the nearby-schools average of 26.6%.

The school occupies a small-town site.

Trend over the last 7 years. Mission Elementary's enrollment has held roughly steady since 2018, when it stood at 131 (now 130). The Hispanic share of enrollment edged down from 79% to 72% over that span. Class-load math has tightened: from 23.8:1 in 2018 to 21.7:1 in 2025.

On the community side, recent activity here tends to focus on open house dates, ride-share offers, and field-trip permission slips. Contributors range from current parents to recent graduates and teachers.