Pierce Elementary

Located at 674 North Gold Canyon, in Ridgecrest, California, Pierce Elementary is a close-knit K-5 school that caters to 297 students (grades K through 5), part of Sierra Sands Unified. By comparison, California's public schools average about 465 students each, so Pierce Elementary sits 36% smaller than that benchmark.

Pierce Elementary is one of 10 schools operated by Sierra Sands Unified, a district that serves 4,974 students overall.

Looking at the student body, Pierce Elementary records that the most-represented group is Hispanic (40%), with the rest of the student body spread across multiple groups. Beyond that, the school records 33% White, 19% Black, 7% multiracial. The wider county runs roughly 57% Hispanic, putting the school's mix considerably less Hispanic than the area baseline.

On the resource side, Pierce Elementary logs 16 full-time-equivalent teachers, putting the student-to-teacher ratio at about 19.0:1. That figure is tighter than the state norm's 22.3:1 average. About 82% of enrolled students meet the income threshold for free or reduced-price lunch, often used as a Title I proxy.

On a residual basis (actual vs predicted given the student mix), Pierce Elementary performs roughly as the BeatsExpectations model predicts for a school with this FRL share. The predicted value is around 30.6%, the actual is 17.8%, a residual of -12.7 points.

Zooming out to the county, Kern County reports that the typical household earns roughly $70,210 per year, about 19% of the adult population holds a bachelor's degree or above, and the poverty rate sits near 15%. Pierce Elementary is one of 279 public schools in Kern County (combined enrollment of about 197,431 students).

Burroughs High is the nearest neighboring public school, about 0.4 miles from this campus. Counting just inside five miles, 8 other public schools cluster around Pierce Elementary. Ranking that nearby cluster on reported proficiency puts Pierce Elementary at 7th of 7; the average score across the group is 36.5%.

Pierce Elementary operates from a low-density location.

Over the past 7-year window. Pierce Elementary's enrollment has shrank 18% since 2018, when it stood at 361 (now 297). Over the same period, the White share decreased from 46% to 33%. The student-to-teacher ratio narrowed from 22.6:1 in 2018 to 19.0:1 today.

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