Summary:
Salida Union Elementary serves students in four K–5 elementary schools and one 6–8 middle school. In 2025–2026, the elementary schools’ unweighted average was 50% in English language arts (ELA), 44% in math and 35% in science, compared with state results of 49%, 38% and 36%. The most important pattern is that elementary results improved in all three subjects, with math the clearest strength relative to the state and science still slightly behind.
Different schools lead in different subjects: Dena Boer Elementary led all-grades ELA at 54%, about 5 percentage points above the state, while Salida Elementary led math at 47% (9 points above the state) and science at 39% (3 points above). At the lower end, Salida Middle School - Vella Campus had the lowest all-grades ELA and math results—42% and 28%, respectively, or 8 and 10 points below state results. Mildred Perkins Elementary had the lowest science result at 25%, 11 points below the state, though its math result was above the state. Vella serves grades 6–8, so its all-grades results are not a like-for-like comparison with the K–5 schools.
Recent gains were broad but especially large at Salida Elementary, whose results rose 17 points in ELA, 18 in math and 10 in science from 2024–2025 to 2025–2026. SchoolDigger statewide ranking percentiles also increased at each elementary school: Salida Elementary went from 21 to 63, while Dena Boer rose from 44 to 66. The reported free/reduced lunch eligible measure for 2024–2025 ranged from 68% at Sisk Elementary to 93% at Salida Elementary; these figures are context, not an explanation for results. Student-teacher ratios ranged from 18 at Vella to 24.1 at Perkins, and neither school size nor ratio neatly matched performance.
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