California City High School
📄 Shareable scorecard →Compare with peers
Most similar nearby schools
Desert Junior-Senior High → Mojave Jr./Sr. High → Rosamond High Early College Campus → Desert Sands Charter → Desert Winds Continuation High → Compare all similar →Enrollment trend & projection
If this trend holds (+1.3%/yr, Total enrollment)
At per-pupil funding of $ / student:
| Horizon | Projected Total enrollment | Change | Funding impact / yr |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 yr (2027) | ~621 | +8 | $0 |
| 3 yr (2029) | ~637 | +24 | $0 |
| 5 yr (2031) | ~654 | +41 | $0 |
Straight-line extrapolation of the recent annual rate — a what-if, not a forecast of intent. Default = California's LCFF base grant for grades 9–12 ($12,423/ADA). Edit the figure to match your school.
Enrollment stability & demand — 2024-25
Two complementary signals: retention (do students stay once enrolled?) and demand (are families choosing the school?). Read against the Kern County baseline — the demographic tide is moving every CA HS, so a school's gap vs. county is the actionable signal.
Enrollment down 5.9% vs. county +12.7%, AND stability (74.3%) below the county median. Fewer families are choosing the school, and the ones who do aren't staying through year-end. Chronic absenteeism is also at 51.0% (up +26.8 pts from 2016-17) — engagement and demand are both signaling decline.
181 of 703 students who enrolled at California City High School this year didn't maintain continuous enrollment (25.7% non-stability). Mid-year transfers, dropouts, and other exits are all counted.
Stability by student group
Nearest peer high schools
Source: California Department of Education, Stability Rate 2024-25. Benchmarks limited to non-virtual public & charter HS with ≥100 cumulative enrollees so by-design-high-churn continuation schools don't dominate the bottom of the distribution. Cumulative enrollment counts every student on the rolls during the year, so it can exceed peak-day enrollment.
Chronic absenteeism — 2024-25
Share of students missing 10% or more of expected attendance — the leading indicator that often precedes the demand decline shown above. Families disengaging tend to raise absenteeism first, then formally leave. Basis: grades 9–12.
Absenteeism is up 26.8 pp since 2016-17. A rising absenteeism trend often precedes formal departure — worth investigating which subgroups are driving it.
Source: California Department of Education, Chronic Absenteeism 2024-25. Benchmarks limited to non-virtual public & charter HS with ≥100 eligible students. CDE didn't publish a usable 2019-20 file (COVID).
SBAC academic outcomes — grade 11, 2025
Share of grade-11 students meeting or exceeding the California standard on Smarter Balanced ELA and Math. This is the academic-readiness signal that pairs with UC Reach (post-grad outcomes), stability (retention), and absenteeism (engagement). Note: statewide median Math is only ~20% — a school at 20% isn't an outlier; one at 45%+ genuinely is.
Source: California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress (CAASPP) Smarter Balanced research files. Benchmarks limited to non-virtual public & charter HS with ≥30 tested students.
Student composition — 2025-26
HS grades 9–12 racial/ethnic composition and program subgroups, from CDE Census Day Enrollment. Two-year shift shown when ≥1 pt — surfaces how the community served has changed since 2023-24.
Race / ethnicity
Program subgroups
Source: California Department of Education, Census Day Enrollment 2025-26 (HS grades 9–12). Δ shown when shift is ≥1 pt since 2023-24. Categories below 0.5% omitted.
District financial profile — Mojave Unified (FY2020)
From 4 years of NCES F-33 filings (the federally-mandated district finance survey). Public schools don't have their own books — the district does. These figures show the financial scale, revenue dependence, instruction-vs-overhead mix, and long-term debt that shape what a school can sustain.
Local: 35.8%
Federal: 13.2%
Source: NCES F-33 Annual Survey of School System Finances (Urban Institute Education Data API). Latest year currently published: FY2020. F-33 is a district-level federal filing — it reflects the Mojave Unified as a whole, not this individual school's books. Revenue mix shows where the district's dollars come from (state aid dominates in CA via LCFF). Instruction share is current expenditure on instruction ÷ total current expenditure (national benchmark ~60%). Long-term debt is end-of-year outstanding (mostly facilities bonds).
California City High School sent 52 applications to the six most selective University of California campuses and 28.8% were admitted, producing a UC Reach of 10.2% — 8.3 percentage points below the California median of 18.5%, higher than 20% of California high schools..
On the peer median (10.9%) · Ranked #2 of 2 similar schools
18.5%
10.9%
53.3%
10.2%
Higher than 20% of California high schools (1105 ranked, ≥50 seniors)
California City High School's UC Reach of 10.2% is below the California median (18.5%). The top 10% of CA schools achieve 53.3% or higher.
In Kern County, where the local median is just 9.6%, this score is unusually strong for its immediate market.
Overall, California City High School's UC Reach is higher than 20% of California high schools (1105 ranked).
California City High School — Enrollment & Outcomes Snapshot
Public · California City · vs. 10 most similar nearby schools
- ▸On UC Reach, California City High School sits near the top of its similar-school group (ranked #2 of 2): 10% vs. a peer median of 11%.
- ▸Its UC Reach has risen 7 points since 2019.
- ▸Across the top-6 UC campuses, California City High School is admitting at roughly +14 percentage points above what its average applicant GPA (3.856) alone would predict (38% actual vs. 25% expected). That's a meaningful signal — it can reflect UC's track record with this school's graduates, students presenting strongly in UC's holistic review (essays, EC's, context), or institutional familiarity helping at the margin. The data can't distinguish which, but the pattern itself is real and worth understanding.
- ▸Senior-class enrollment is up 6% (136→144 from 2018 to 2026), outpacing the peer-group median of -2%.
- ▸Enrollment has been growing (+1.3%/yr); projects to ~637 by 2029.
Enrollment projection
Your school vs. its 10 most similar nearby schools
| School | Type | Size | UC Reach | Enroll. trend |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| California City High School | Public | 613 | 10.2% | +6% |
| Peer-group median | 10.9% | -2% | ||
| Desert Junior-Senior High | Public | 507 | — | -12% |
| Mojave Jr./Sr. High | Public | 368 | — | +27% |
| Rosamond High Early College Campus | Public | 907 | — | +9% |
| Desert Sands Charter | Public | 604 | — | -63% |
| Desert Winds Continuation High | Public | 468 | — | -20% |
| Soar High (students On Academic Rise) | Public | 720 | — | +60% |
| Boron Junior-Senior High | Public | 251 | — | -13% |
| Tehachapi High School | Public | 1249 | 10.9% | -14% |
| Kern Valley High School | Public | 509 | — | +31% |
| Mojave River Academy - Silver Mountain | Public | 759 | — | +64% |
UC Reach = top-6 UC admits ÷ senior class (can exceed 100% when students are admitted to multiple campuses). Enrollment trend = first-to-latest grade-12 change on file. Similar schools matched on proximity, size, type. Methodology →
UC funnel — which kids are getting in at what GPA
Combining the school's applicant pool GPA, admit pool GPA, actual admit rate, and statewide CA admit rates by individual GPA band, we can read which GPA tiers tend to get in — and which don't.
| Campus | 4.00+ GPA | 3.70–3.99 GPA | 3.30–3.69 GPA | < 3.30 GPA |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| UC San Diego | Strong shot | Moderate | Long odds | Filtered out |
| UC Irvine | Strong shot | Real shot | Long odds | Filtered out |
The numbers behind it
| Campus | Applicant GPA | Admit GPA | Lift ⓘ | Admit rate | vs peer schools @ same GPA ⓘ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UC San Diego (2024) | 3.82 | 4.12 | +0.30 | 60.0% | Peers +0.34 · wider |
| UC Irvine | 3.80 | 4.06 | +0.25 | 38.5% | Peers +0.33 · wider |
📊 Statewide CA admit rates by individual GPA band, 2025 (for reference)
| GPA band | UCB | UCLA | UCSD | UCSB | UCI | UCD |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4.00+ | 17.0% | 15.1% | 45.2% | 62.3% | 46.3% | 65.9% |
| 3.70–3.99 | 3.1% | 1.6% | 9.3% | 17.6% | 17.0% | 31.1% |
| 3.30–3.69 | 0.8% | 0.5% | 1.5% | 2.8% | 2.4% | 10.3% |
| 3.00–3.29 | 0.4% | 0.3% | 0.2% | 0.4% | 0.3% | 1.9% |
| < 3.00 | 0.7% | 0.4% | 0.3% | 0.2% | 0.1% | 0.7% |
Where California City High School sits vs. all California schools ⓘ
Overall, this school admits its UC applicants 13.7 points above what their GPAs predict (38.5% actual vs. 24.8% expected).
UC Outcomes Trend — 2018–2025
Class size from CDE grade 12 enrollment. Campus-level data — applicant/admit totals may count a student at multiple campuses more than once.
Campus Breakdown — 2025
| Campus | Applicants | Admits | Enrollees | Admit Rate | UC Reach | Yield | Avg GPA (App) | Avg GPA (Adm) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UC Berkeley → Elite | 5 | — | — | — | — | — | 4.06 | — |
| UCLA → Elite | 8 | — | — | — | — | — | 3.83 | — |
| UC San Diego → Selective | 10 | 4 | — | 40.0% | 2.7% | — | 3.89 | — |
| UC Santa Barbara → Selective | 7 | 3 | — | 42.9% | 2.0% | — | 3.85 | — |
| UC Irvine → Selective | 13 | 5 | 4 | 38.5% | 3.4% | 80.0% | 3.80 | 4.06 |
| UC Davis → | 9 | 3 | — | 33.3% | 2.0% | — | 3.91 | — |