Rancho San Joaquin Middle

As an average-sized intermediate school in Irvine, California, Rancho San Joaquin Middle hosts 860 students from grades 7 through 8, one of the schools within Irvine Unified. That puts it 31% above the typical public school in California, which averages around 659 students.

Rancho San Joaquin Middle is one of 44 schools operated by Irvine Unified, a district that educates 37,948 students overall.

For racial and ethnic makeup, Rancho San Joaquin Middle records that the largest single group is Asian at 50%, but no single group is in the majority; the rest looks like 26% White, 12% Hispanic, 9% multiracial, 3% Black. The wider county runs roughly 22% Asian, putting the school's mix considerably more Asian than the area baseline.

On the income-and-resources front, On paper, Rancho San Joaquin Middle has 35 full-time-equivalent teachers, translating to a class-load average of around 24.4:1. Statewide, the average ratio sits near 20.7:1, putting Rancho San Joaquin Middle higher than the state norm the norm. Around 22% of the student body qualifies for free or reduced-price meals, a number frequently used as a low-income enrollment indicator. Set against Orange County (around 55%), the school's rate is noticeably below typical.

With demographic context factored in, Rancho San Joaquin Middle performs roughly as the BeatsExpectations model predicts for a school with this FRL share. The predicted value is around 66.2%, the actual is 76.7%, a residual of +10.5 points.

In the broader community, Orange County reports that median household income runs about $116,289, 44% of adults hold a bachelor's degree or higher, and census figures put the poverty rate at about 7%. In all, Orange County runs 649 public schools (combined enrollment of about 430,458 students), of which Rancho San Joaquin Middle is one.

The closest other public school is South Lake Middle, roughly 0.4 miles away. 8 of the 8 nearest public schools sit inside a five-mile radius. On composite proficiency, Rancho San Joaquin Middle comes 2nd of 9 in the immediate cluster, above the nearby-schools average of 65.6%.

The school occupies a downtown site.

Five-year trend. Looking back 7 years, enrollment at Rancho San Joaquin Middle has changed only slightly, going from 853 students in 2018 to 860 in 2025. The Hispanic share of enrollment climbed from 7% to 12% over that span. Class-load math has tightened: from 26.3:1 in 2018 to 24.4:1 in 2025.

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