South Fork Elementary

Set in Weldon, California, South Fork Elementary is a close-knit elementary campus, one of the schools within South Fork Union. It hosts 348 students across grades K through 8. That puts it 25% leaner than the typical public school in California, which averages around 465 students.

Operationally, South Fork Elementary answers to South Fork Union, which sets policy, hires staff, and reports enrollment to the state.

Looking at the student body, South Fork Elementary logs that the largest single group is White, at 63% of enrollment; the rest comes out to 25% Hispanic, 10% multiracial. By comparison, Kern County as a whole is about 44% White, so the school skews meaningfully more White than its surroundings.

Looking at school resources, The school currently runs with 18 full-time-equivalent teachers, for a student-teacher ratio near 19.4:1. The state averages around 22.3:1, so this campus is tighter than the state norm typical. An estimated 79% of students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, a commonly cited indicator of low-income enrollment.

On a demographically-adjusted basis, South Fork Elementary performs roughly as the BeatsExpectations model predicts for a school with this FRL share. The predicted value is around 32.4%, the actual is 34.9%, a residual of +2.5 points.

In the broader community, the surrounding 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 census figures put the poverty rate at about 15%. Across Kern County's 279 public schools (combined enrollment of about 197,431 students), South Fork Elementary is one campus in the mix.

The closest other public school is Kern Valley High, roughly 11.0 miles away. On composite proficiency, South Fork Elementary comes 3rd of 7 in the immediate cluster, higher than the nearby-schools average of 29.3%.

The school occupies an outlying site.

Five-year trend. South Fork Elementary's enrollment has edged up 42% since 2018, when it stood at 245 (now 348). The White share of enrollment declined from 76% to 63% over that span. The student-to-teacher ratio fell from 21.3:1 in 2018 to 19.4:1 today.

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