Menlo Atherton High School
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Palo Alto Senior High School → Palo Alto High → Los Altos High → Sequoia High School → Woodside High School → Compare all similar →Enrollment trend & projection
If this trend holds (-1.6%/yr, Total enrollment)
At per-pupil funding of $ / student:
| Horizon | Projected Total enrollment | Change | Funding impact / yr |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 yr (2027) | ~2,117 | -35 | $0 |
| 3 yr (2029) | ~2,050 | -102 | $0 |
| 5 yr (2031) | ~1,984 | -168 | $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 San Mateo County baseline — the demographic tide is moving every CA HS, so a school's gap vs. county is the actionable signal.
Menlo Atherton High School is recruiting families faster than San Mateo County is shrinking (school -0.7% vs. county -5.3%), but 157 students didn't make it to year-end. The recruitment engine works; the mid-year exits are worth understanding.
157 of 2,231 students who enrolled at Menlo Atherton High School this year didn't maintain continuous enrollment (7.0% 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 3.3 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 — Sequoia Union High (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: 79.5%
Federal: 3.9%
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 Sequoia Union High 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).
-24.1 pp vs. peer median (54.2%) · Ranked #7 of 9 similar schools
18.5%
54.2%
53.3%
30.1%
Higher than 73% of California high schools (1105 ranked, ≥50 seniors)
Menlo Atherton High School's UC Reach of 30.1% is above the California median (18.5%). The top 10% of CA schools achieve 53.3% or higher.
Against similar schools, Menlo Atherton High School trails the peer-group median (54.2%) — even though it looks strong vs. the state average.
For context, the elite tier (top 1%) clears 102.7% — a gap of 73 pp from where this school sits.
Overall, Menlo Atherton High School's UC Reach is higher than 73% of California high schools (1105 ranked).
Menlo Atherton High School — Enrollment & Outcomes Snapshot
Public · Atherton · vs. 10 most similar nearby schools
- ▸On UC Reach, Menlo Atherton High School sits near the bottom of its similar-school group (ranked #7 of 9): 30% vs. a peer median of 54%.
- ▸Its UC Reach has slipped 4 points since 2018 — worth watching.
- ▸Senior-class enrollment is down 1% (549→545 from 2018 to 2026), tracking the peer-group median of -2%.
- ▸In business terms, this is market-share growth during a market contraction. San Mateo County's senior population shrank 5% over the same window — Menlo Atherton High School only shrank 1%. So Menlo Atherton High School picked up about 5 percentage points of relative share — families chose it over the alternatives even as the overall pool got smaller. That's overperforming the market in a shrinking market.
- ▸At its recent rate (-1.6%/yr), enrollment projects to ~2050 by 2029 — about 102 fewer students than today.
Enrollment projection
That's about 102 fewer students. At per-student funding of $ per student, that's roughly $0 in annual state funding at risk.
Default = California's LCFF base grant for grades 9–12 ($12,423 per ADA) — adjust to your district's actual per-pupil figure. Projection extrapolates the recent annual rate — not a forecast of intent.
Your school vs. its 10 most similar nearby schools
| School | Type | Size | UC Reach | Enroll. trend |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Menlo Atherton High School | Public | 2152 | 30.1% | -1% |
| Peer-group median | 54.2% | -2% | ||
| Palo Alto Senior High School | Public | 1828 | 69.9% | -8% |
| Palo Alto High | Public | 1828 | — | -2% |
| Los Altos High | Public | 2203 | 54.3% | +4% |
| Sequoia High School | Public | 1839 | 21.3% | -5% |
| Woodside High School | Public | 1694 | 31.7% | -2% |
| Carlmont High School | Public | 2385 | 54.1% | +4% |
| Henry M. Gunn High | Public | 1606 | — | -16% |
| Homestead High School | Public | 2190 | 54.6% | -1% |
| Fremont High | Public | 2015 | 24.1% | +4% |
| Irvington High School | Public | 2141 | 60.6% | -15% |
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 →
Admit rate vs. CA peer average, by campus ⓘ
How does this school's admit rate at each UC compare to other CA schools whose applicant pool averages the same GPA?
| Campus | Applicant GPA (avg) | Actual admit rate | CA peer avg | Δ | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UC Berkeley | 4.02 | 13.3% | 12.9% | +0.4pp | On target |
| UCLA | 4.01 | 8.4% | 9.3% | -0.9pp | On target |
| UC San Diego | 4.00 | 14.9% | 20.0% | -5.1pp | Under |
| UC Santa Barbara | 3.93 | 22.2% | 29.6% | -7.3pp | Under |
| UC Irvine | 3.99 | 11.6% | 25.9% | -14.3pp | Under |
| UC Davis | 3.95 | 29.0% | 32.5% | -3.5pp | On target |
Where Menlo Atherton High School sits vs. all California schools ⓘ
Overall, this school admits its UC applicants in line with what their GPAs predict (16.8% actual vs. 21.6% 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 | 173 | 23 | 10 | 13.3% | 4.0% | 43.5% | 4.02 | 4.18 |
| UCLA → Elite | 179 | 15 | 8 | 8.4% | 2.6% | 53.3% | 4.01 | 4.25 |
| UC San Diego → Selective | 168 | 25 | 5 | 14.9% | 4.4% | 20.0% | 4.00 | 4.23 |
| UC Santa Barbara → Selective | 198 | 44 | 7 | 22.2% | 7.7% | 15.9% | 3.93 | 4.25 |
| UC Irvine → Selective | 138 | 16 | — | 11.6% | 2.8% | — | 3.99 | 4.14 |
| UC Davis → | 169 | 49 | 14 | 29.0% | 8.6% | 28.6% | 3.95 | 4.14 |