Purche Avenue Elementary

Purche Avenue Elementary, a small K-5 school in Gardena, California, part of Los Angeles Unified, caters to 373 students, covering grades K through 5.

Los Angeles Unified runs 784 schools in total, collectively educating 406,887 students. Purche Avenue Elementary is one of those campuses.

On the student-mix side, Purche Avenue Elementary records that the most-represented group is Black (47%), with the rest of the student body spread across multiple groups; the rest comes out to 37% Hispanic, 13% multiracial. That is visibly more Black than the county at large, where the share is closer to 8%.

In terms of school funding signals, On paper, Purche Avenue Elementary has 21 full-time-equivalent teachers, translating to a class-load average of around 17.8:1. That figure is tighter than the state norm's 22.3:1 average. Around 90% of the student body qualifies for free or reduced-price meals, often used as a Title I proxy. That share is north of Los Angeles County's rate of about 70%.

After controlling for student poverty, Purche Avenue Elementary performs roughly as the BeatsExpectations model predicts for a school with this FRL share. The predicted value is around 25.8%, the actual is 26.1%, a residual of +0.3 points.

Zooming out to the county, census data for Los Angeles County shows median household income runs about $90,112, roughly 36% of adults have completed at least a four-year degree, and the poverty rate sits near 10%. Across Los Angeles County's 2244 public schools (combined enrollment of about 1,265,907 students), Purche Avenue Elementary is one campus in the mix.

Animo Legacy Charter Middle is the nearest neighboring public school, about 0.9 miles from this campus. Counting just inside five miles, 8 other public schools cluster around Purche Avenue Elementary. On composite proficiency, Purche Avenue Elementary comes 6th of 7 in the immediate cluster, beneath the nearby-schools average of 35.0%.

Geographically, the school is in an inner-city area.

Trend over the last 7 years. Over the past 7-year window, the student count decreased 23%: 487 students in 2018 compared to 373 in 2025. The Black share of enrollment declined from 63% to 47% over that span. Class-load math has tightened: from 22.1:1 in 2018 to 17.8:1 in 2025.

Within the allk12 community for this school, the page collects discussion, questions, and updates around enrollment questions, classroom assignments, and PTA news. The community welcomes input from current and former families.