Pacific Coast Charter

Pacific Coast Charter is a multi-level school of tiny scale in Watsonville, California, overseen by Pajaro Valley Unified, enrolling 132 students in grades K through 12. By comparison, California's public schools average about 602 students each, so Pacific Coast Charter sits 78% below that benchmark.

Pacific Coast Charter is one of 33 schools operated by Pajaro Valley Unified, a district that educates 16,482 students overall.

On the student-mix side, Pacific Coast Charter reports that the student body is overwhelmingly Hispanic (83%); the rest breaks down as 10% White, 4% Asian, 4% multiracial. By comparison, Santa Cruz County as a whole is about 35% Hispanic, so the school skews considerably more Hispanic than its surroundings.

Looking at school resources, Staff filings list 6 full-time-equivalent teachers, which works out to roughly 21.6:1 students per teacher. Statewide, the average ratio sits near 18.6:1, putting Pacific Coast Charter higher than the state norm the norm. Roughly 78% of students at Pacific Coast Charter qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, often used as a Title I proxy. That share is above Santa Cruz County's rate of about 52%.

On a demographically-adjusted basis, Pacific Coast Charter sits in the middle band of the BeatsExpectations distribution. Schools with this campus's student mix typically land near 33.0%; this one delivers 26.6%.

Around the school, ACS estimates for Santa Cruz County put median household earnings sit near $111,093, about 44% of the adult population holds a bachelor's degree or above, and census figures put the poverty rate at about 6%. In all, Santa Cruz County runs 83 public schools (combined enrollment of about 36,316 students), of which Pacific Coast Charter is one.

Nearest neighbor: Santa Cruz County Career Advancement Charter, around 0.2 miles off. Counting just inside five miles, 8 other public schools cluster around Pacific Coast Charter. Among the 8 schools in that immediate cluster with test data (this one included), Pacific Coast Charter ranks 2nd on composite proficiency, above the local average of 18.5%.

The campus sits in an urban setting. Pacific Coast Charter operates as a public charter school, meaning it is publicly funded but governed independently of the surrounding district's traditional schools.

Over the past 7-year window. Pacific Coast Charter's enrollment has shrank 28% since 2018, when it stood at 184 (now 132). Over the same period, the White share declined from 34% to 10%. The student-to-teacher ratio rose from 16.7:1 in 2018 to 21.6:1 today.

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