Pacific Community Charter School: Full Guide

Location: Point Arena, CA

Are you a student or parent at Pacific Community Charter School? Want to understand how to get the most out of high school?

We've written the best guide to Pacific Community Charter available. Here we'll cover:

• Breakdowns of student ethnicity, gender, and family income
• How safe Pacific Community Charter is to attend
• SAT/ACT/AP scores earned by Pacific Community Charter students
• Which AP/IB classes you can take at Pacific Community Charter
• Every sports team you can join at Pacific Community Charter

Let's get started!

Basic Information

Pacific Community Charter School is a public school, supporting grades 0 to 12 . It's located in Point Arena, CA in Mendocino County.

Based on its location, Pacific Community Charter is classified as a school in a remote rural area, over 25 miles away from an urbanized area. Here's the location on a map:

Contact Information

Mailing address:

Pacific Community Charter School
Po Box 984
Point Arena, CA 95468

Phone number: 7078824131

Pacific Community Charter School homepage: http://www.pacificcharterschool.org/p/high-school-program.html

Principal: Sigrid Hillscan
Email the principal: [email protected]

Student Demographics

Student Enrollment

The total enrollment at Pacific Community Charter School is 84 students, making it a small high school, in the bottom 25% of all California high schools by size.

With at most a few dozen students in your class, you'll get to know most other Pacific Community Charter students well. But the small student body size may mean that you won't get access to the full range of activities and classes that other high schools offer.

If you find that your interests aren't well served by Pacific Community Charter, consider transferring to a larger high school if possible, or find ways to supplement your interests in your community or on the Internet.

Growth in Student Body Size

Is Pacific Community Charter School growing or shrinking? This will help you see trends in where the school is headed.

From our calculations, the enrollment at Pacific Community Charter has increased over the past few years. We calculate this by comparing enrollment in grades 9 to 12.

	Male Students	Female Students	All Students
9th grade	4	3	7
10th grade	5	5	10
11th grade	1	2	3
12th grade	3	2	5

As you can see in the table above, the freshman class is 2 students larger than the senior class. This suggests that the school is growing in size and taking on more students.

There are a few reasons this could be happening. The city of Point Arena could be growing in population, thus sending more students into Pacific Community Charter. Alternatively, Pacific Community Charter could be relaxing its student policies and taking in more students.

Gender Split

Are there more boys or girls at Pacific Community Charter School?

From our statistics, Pacific Community Charter has a 52:48 split between male and female students in the high school grades.

Pacific Community Charter has a balanced male-female ratio that's largely representative of the general population in Mendocino County. Since the student body is roughly half and half, it should feel like there are equal numbers of boys and girls in your classes.

This usually means that Pacific Community Charter doesn't strongly select for either males or females, unlike other schools that have a large majority of males or females.

Ethnicity Breakdown

What's the racial diversity at Pacific Community Charter School? Does one ethnicity make up most of the student body, or is it fairly balanced?

From our statistics, Pacific Community Charter has a somewhat homogenous student body, with the majority of students identifying as one ethnicity, but not representing over 70% of the student body. Most schools in California fit this profile, so Pacific Community Charter isn't out of the ordinary. Most students attending class with you will be of the predominant ethnicity, but there will be meaningful diversity from other races.

The majority of students at Pacific Community Charter are white. In California, white students make up 26.3% of all California students, and are the second most common ethnicity after Hispanic students. Thus Pacific Community Charter is one of hundreds of schools in the state that have a majority of white students.

	Percentage	Number
American Indian/Alaska Native	3.5%	3
Asian	0.0%	0
Hispanic	26.1%	22
Black	0.0%	0
White	58.3%	49
Hawaiian Native/Pacific Islander	0.0%	0
Two or more races	11.9%	10

High schools usually reflect the population in the surrounding area, so the ethnicities of students likely resembles those of Point Arena. If you'd like to see how other nearby schools look in diversity, just google "[name of school] prepscholar" to find our guide to that specific school.

Income Level of Pacific Community Charter Families

What are the family incomes of students at Pacific Community Charter School? To determine this, we look at the number of students who qualify for free or reduced lunches, a classification by the US federal government.

To qualify for a reduced price meal, family income needs to be below 185% of the federal poverty guidelines. For a family of 4, this means an income of around $45,000 or below.

To qualify for a free meal, family income needs to be below 130% of the federal poverty guidelines. For a family of 4, this means an income of around $32,000 or below.

The lower the percentage of students who qualify for free or reduced price meals, the higher the income levels are likely to be.

At Pacific Community Charter, 4.7% of students qualify for reduced-price lunches, and 60.7% qualify for free lunches.

This means Pacific Community Charter has a moderate percentage of students at or near poverty. About half of all schools in California show this level of poverty or greater. The income level of families in Point Arena is likely to be relatively low.

	Number	Percent
Reduced-price lunches	4	4.7%
Free lunches	51	60.7%
Do not qualify for reduced-price or free lunches	29	34.5%

As with ethnicity, this likely reflects the surrounding community in Point Arena and doesn't speak much about the school itself.

Pacific Community Charter is in the middle 50% of schools by income level. Generally, higher income level schools are better-funded and have a higher quality range of classes and activities. Pacific Community Charter is likely in the middle of the pack in this regard and will give you a good set of options to try.

If you have any interests that Pacific Community Charter doesn't cover, look to your local community for activities, or to the Internet for self-study AP classes.

School Safety

How safe is Pacific Community Charter School to attend? Can you expect a lot of conflict as a student here?

To study this, we look at disciplinary data for two types of incidents at Pacific Community Charter: referrals to law enforcement (when incidents are reported to police), and arrests.

These are the most serious disciplinary actions available to school administration and are more severe than suspensions or expulsions. Suspensions are often discretionary and can be given just for being disruptive in class. In contrast, law enforcement referrals and arrests often indicate incidents that put the safety of other Pacific Community Charter students at risk.

Academic Performance

Now we get to a major aspect of assessing a high school: academic performance. How good of an education will you get at Pacific Community Charter School? Will you be competitive for college? Will you have access to advanced classes?

We've compiled everything we could find about Pacific Community Charter's academics here.

Standardized Testing

Next, we'll look at another major piece of high school academics: standardized testing performance for Pacific Community Charter School students. These are tests that are administered to large populations of students for comparison purposes.

Let’s start by taking a look at the data for nationally administered standardized tests.

Advanced Placement (AP)

Advanced Placement (AP) classes are college-level courses that are an additional academic challenge may give Pacific Community Charter School students credit for college.

Here's what we're looking for: high average AP test scores as well as high AP passing rates.

AP Scores

Every year, roughly 9 students in grades 9-12 at Pacific Community Charter take 0 AP exams. It's important to understand how students score on the AP - earning a 3, 4, or 5 on the AP test means passing the test and often earning college credit.

We have specific data on how many students got a 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 (out of 5) on AP exams in the chart below:

AP Test-Taking Statistics

Another way to gauge the quality of a school's AP program is to see how many AP students actually took AP exams at Pacific Community Charter School. If a lot of students enroll in AP courses but don't actually take the AP tests, it can be a sign that students don't feel adequately prepared to take the test, or the school isn't encouraging students to take the exams enough.

Note: The most recent data we have available is from 2012, so the statistics may have changed since then. Most likely, however, the trends are likely to continue - above average schools are likely to stay above average, and below average schools are likely to stay below average.

AP Passing Rates

For AP students at Pacific Community Charter School who take the exam, it's important to know how they do. Here we have specific data on how many students got a passing grade (a 3 or above) on all, some, or none of the AP exams that they took.