Pescadero Elementary and Middle

Pescadero Elementary and Middle, a very small elementary campus in Pescadero, California, one of the schools within La Honda-Pescadero Unified, works with 126 students, covering grades K through 8. That puts it 73% below the typical public school in California, which averages around 465 students.

La Honda-Pescadero Unified runs 3 schools in total, collectively educating 272 students. Pescadero Elementary and Middle is one of those campuses.

On demographics, Pescadero Elementary and Middle reports that 79% of the student body identifies as Hispanic. Beyond that, the school shows 18% White. That is meaningfully more Hispanic than the county at large, where the share is closer to 25%.

On the resource side, Staff filings list 10 full-time-equivalent teachers, which works out to roughly 13.1:1 students per teacher. The state averages around 22.3:1, so this campus is tighter than the state norm typical. Around 42% of the student body qualifies for free or reduced-price meals, a commonly cited indicator of low-income enrollment.

Adjusting for the school's free-and-reduced-lunch share, Pescadero Elementary and Middle is in the bottom 10% of California public schools. The BeatsExpectations model predicts schools with this FRL share to land around 54.4%; Pescadero Elementary and Middle posts 32.0%, -22.5 points below that line.

In the area at large, San Mateo County reports that median household earnings sit near $158,855, roughly 54% of adults have completed at least a four-year degree, and roughly 4% of residents live below the federal poverty line. In all, San Mateo County runs 176 public schools (combined enrollment of about 82,403 students), of which Pescadero Elementary and Middle is one.

Nearest neighbor: Pescadero High, around 1.0 miles off. Within ten miles, there are 2 other public schools, a sparser pattern than typical urban areas. On composite proficiency, Pescadero Elementary and Middle comes 7th of 8 in the immediate cluster, beneath the nearby-schools average of 58.4%.

The campus sits in an outlying setting.

Five-year trend. Over the past 7-year window, the student count shrank 20%: 157 students in 2018 compared to 126 in 2025.

In the discussion threads here, the feed for Pescadero Elementary and Middle typically covers open house dates, ride-share offers, and field-trip permission slips. Contributors range from current parents to recent graduates and teachers.