Sunshine Gardens Elementary

Sunshine Gardens Elementary, a compact elementary-level community in South San Francisco, California, overseen by South San Francisco Unified, hosts 329 students, covering grades K through 5. By comparison, California's public schools average about 465 students each, so Sunshine Gardens Elementary sits 29% smaller than that benchmark.

Within South San Francisco Unified, which oversees 15 schools and 7,644 students, Sunshine Gardens Elementary is one campus in the system.

Looking at the student body, Sunshine Gardens Elementary shows that Hispanic students make up the majority at 59%. Other groups include 22% Asian, 10% multiracial, 4% White. By comparison, San Mateo County as a whole is about 25% Hispanic, so the school skews considerably more Hispanic than its surroundings.

Looking at school resources, Staff filings list 17 full-time-equivalent teachers, which works out to roughly 19.3:1 students per teacher. That figure is tighter than the state norm's 22.3:1 average. About 48% of enrolled students meet the income threshold for free or reduced-price lunch, which schools and policymakers use as a rough income-mix signal. By comparison, San Mateo County runs at roughly 34%, so the school's eligibility rate is higher than the surrounding baseline.

After controlling for student poverty, Sunshine Gardens Elementary falls in the UNDERPERFORMING tier of the BeatsExpectations residual. Given its student profile, a typical campus would land near 50.7%; this one comes in at 33.9%, -16.8 points off the demographic line.

In the area at large, the surrounding county (San Mateo County) shows that median household income runs about $158,855, about 54% of the adult population holds a bachelor's degree or above, and census figures put the poverty rate at about 4%. Sunshine Gardens Elementary is one of 176 public schools in San Mateo County (combined enrollment of about 82,403 students).

Nearest neighbor: El Camino High, around 0.3 miles off. 8 of the 8 nearest public schools sit inside a five-mile radius. Among the 8 schools in that immediate cluster with test data (this one included), Sunshine Gardens Elementary ranks 5th on composite proficiency, behind the local average of 38.7%.

The campus sits in an urban setting.

Over the past 7-year window. Sunshine Gardens Elementary's enrollment has fell 15% since 2018, when it stood at 385 (now 329). The Asian share of enrollment decreased from 27% to 22% over that span. The student-to-teacher ratio narrowed from 22.6:1 in 2018 to 19.3:1 today.

On the community side, recent activity here tends to focus on fundraisers, lost-and-found posts, and report-card season. Contributors range from current parents to recent graduates and teachers.