Cesar Chavez Elementary

Cesar Chavez Elementary is a PK–5 school serving 290 students on Jaguar Drive in the south/west portion of Santa Fe, New Mexico, as part of Santa Fe Public Schools. The district as a whole ranks below the state midpoint (56th of 87, 36th percentile), and Cesar Chavez Elementary sits well below even that: in 2025–2026 it placed 326th of 346 elementary schools statewide, at the 6th percentile with 0 stars, and it has been in the bottom tier in nine of the ten reported years. Economic need is essentially universal here — 100% of students qualified for free or reduced lunch in 2024–25 — and the student–teacher ratio of 13.3:1 is squarely in the middle of the nearby range, so neither poverty nor staffing sets this school apart from its neighbors.

Academically, Language Arts is the stronger subject: 28.79% of students scored proficient, compared with 41.11% district-wide and 43.34% statewide. Math is the school's defining weakness at 8.40%, versus 23.53% in the district and 25.54% in the state, placing it ninth of the eleven nearby schools compared. Fifth-grade science came in at 15.91%. Third- and fourth-grade math figures were suppressed by the state and are reported only as "under 20%," still below the district's roughly 24% marks. Fifth-grade Language Arts (34.09%) is the bright spot — the school's best result and its narrowest gap to the district.

Several nearby schools rank near the bottom too: Nina Otero Community School, R.M. Sweeney Elementary and El Camino Real Academy Community are all within about 1.7 miles and all bottom-quartile. But Francis X. Nava Elementary and Pinon Elementary, in the same district with identical 100% free/reduced-lunch enrollment, rank at the 74th and 62nd percentiles. Language Arts nearly doubled year over year (14.6% to 28.79%) while math barely moved (5.11% to 8.40%), and subgroup results are uniformly low rather than concentrated in any one group of students.