W. R. Nelson Elementary

Located at 14392 Browning Ave., in Tustin, California, W. R. Nelson Elementary is a mid-sized primary school that teaches 460 students (grades K through 5), one of the schools within Tustin Unified.

Across the 28 schools in Tustin Unified (21,220 students total), W. R. Nelson Elementary accounts for its share of the district's footprint.

For racial and ethnic makeup, W. R. Nelson Elementary lists that the largest single group is Hispanic, at 79% of enrollment. The remainder comes out to 8% Asian, 7% White, 5% multiracial. By comparison, Orange County as a whole is about 34% Hispanic, so the school skews meaningfully more Hispanic than its surroundings.

On the resource side, The school employs 18 full-time-equivalent teachers, for a student-teacher ratio near 25.6:1. Statewide, the average ratio sits near 22.3:1, putting W. R. Nelson Elementary higher than the state norm the norm. About 87% of enrolled students meet the income threshold for free or reduced-price lunch, a commonly cited indicator of low-income enrollment. Set against Orange County (around 55%), the school's rate is noticeably above typical.

Adjusting for the school's free-and-reduced-lunch share, W. R. Nelson Elementary performs roughly as the BeatsExpectations model predicts for a school with this FRL share. The predicted value is around 27.6%, the actual is 25.2%, a residual of -2.4 points.

Zooming out to the county, ACS estimates for Orange County put the typical household earns roughly $116,289 per year, about 44% of the adult population holds a bachelor's degree or above, 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 W. R. Nelson Elementary is one.

OCCS:CHEP/PCHS is the nearest neighboring public school, about 0.6 miles from this campus. Counting just inside five miles, 8 other public schools cluster around W. R. Nelson Elementary. Among the 7 schools in that immediate cluster with test data (this one included), W. R. Nelson Elementary ranks 6th on composite proficiency, below the local average of 46.3%.

Geographically, the school is in an urban area.

Five-year trend. W. R. Nelson Elementary's enrollment has contracted 5% since 2018, when it stood at 484 (now 460). The student-to-teacher ratio pulled in from 27.7:1 in 2018 to 25.6:1 today.

On this page, posts here usually surface around open house dates, ride-share offers, and field-trip permission slips. Posting is open to anyone connected to the school.