Painted Hills Middle

Painted Hills Middle is one of the mid-sized middle-grades schools in Desert Hot Springs, California, part of Palm Springs Unified, with 722 students on its rolls from grades 6 through 8.

Across the 27 schools in Palm Springs Unified (20,007 students total), Painted Hills Middle accounts for its share of the district's footprint.

For racial and ethnic makeup, Painted Hills Middle lists that the student body is overwhelmingly Hispanic (80%). The remainder breaks down as 9% White, 5% multiracial, 5% Black. That is noticeably more Hispanic than the county at large, where the share is closer to 51%.

On the income-and-resources front, On paper, Painted Hills Middle has 33 full-time-equivalent teachers, translating to a class-load average of around 21.7:1. Statewide, the average ratio sits near 20.7:1, putting Painted Hills Middle higher than the state norm the norm. About 97% of enrolled students meet the income threshold for free or reduced-price lunch, often used as a Title I proxy. By comparison, Riverside County runs at roughly 74%, so the school's eligibility rate is above the surrounding baseline.

After controlling for student poverty, Painted Hills Middle performs roughly as the BeatsExpectations model predicts for a school with this FRL share. The predicted value is around 21.6%, the actual is 17.4%, a residual of -4.2 points.

Zooming out to the county, census data for Riverside County shows the typical household earns roughly $93,074 per year, 26% of adults hold a bachelor's degree or higher, and census figures put the poverty rate at about 8%. Painted Hills Middle is one of 543 public schools in Riverside County (combined enrollment of about 424,872 students).

Nearest neighbor: Bella Vista Elementary, around 0.2 miles off. Counting just inside five miles, 7 other public schools cluster around Painted Hills Middle. On composite proficiency, Painted Hills Middle comes 6th of 9 in the immediate cluster, below the nearby-schools average of 23.1%.

The campus sits in a town-based setting.

Over the past 7-year window. Looking back 7 years, enrollment at Painted Hills Middle has shrank 10%, going from 801 students in 2018 to 722 in 2025. Over the same period, the Hispanic share expanded from 74% to 80%. The student-to-teacher ratio tightened from 25.3:1 in 2018 to 21.7:1 today.

On the community side, the page collects discussion, questions, and updates around sports schedules, lunch menu changes, and school spirit week. Anyone with firsthand experience at this school can post or comment.