Valencia Elementary

Located at 250 Aptos School Rd., in Aptos, California, Valencia Elementary is a medium-sized primary school that educates 487 students (grades K through 6), one of the schools within Pajaro Valley Unified.

Across the 33 schools in Pajaro Valley Unified (16,482 students total), Valencia Elementary accounts for its share of the district's footprint.

On the student-mix side, Valencia Elementary logs that the largest single group is White, at 62% of enrollment; the rest breaks down as 30% Hispanic, 7% multiracial. That composition is broadly in line with Santa Cruz County as a whole.

On the resource side, Staff filings list 24 full-time-equivalent teachers, which works out to roughly 20.3:1 students per teacher. That figure is tighter than the state norm's 22.3:1 average. Roughly 37% of students at Valencia Elementary qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, a commonly cited indicator of low-income enrollment. That share is lower than Santa Cruz County's rate of about 52%.

On a residual basis (actual vs predicted given the student mix), Valencia Elementary tracks the demographic baseline. The model predicts 57.5% given the school's FRL share; actual proficiency is 61.9%.

In the broader community, community-level numbers for Santa Cruz County indicate the typical household earns roughly $111,093 per year, about 44% of the adult population holds a bachelor's degree or above, and census figures put the poverty rate at about 6%. Across Santa Cruz County's 83 public schools (combined enrollment of about 36,316 students), Valencia Elementary is one campus in the mix.

The closest other public school is Aptos Junior High, roughly 0.7 miles away. 8 of the 8 nearest public schools sit inside a five-mile radius. On composite proficiency, Valencia Elementary comes 1st of 9 in the immediate cluster, ahead of the nearby-schools average of 41.9%.

Valencia Elementary operates from a bedroom-community location.

Over the past 7-year window. Valencia Elementary's enrollment has ticked down 13% since 2018, when it stood at 558 (now 487). The student-to-teacher ratio narrowed from 23.3:1 in 2018 to 20.3:1 today.

On allk12, the feed for Valencia Elementary typically covers enrollment questions, classroom assignments, and PTA news. The community welcomes input from current and former families.