Palo Alto High
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Most similar nearby schools
Palo Alto Senior High School → Menlo Atherton High School → Sequoia High School → Woodside High School → Henry M. Gunn High → 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) | ~1,800 | -28 | $0 |
| 3 yr (2029) | ~1,744 | -84 | $0 |
| 5 yr (2031) | ~1,690 | -138 | $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 Santa Clara County baseline — the demographic tide is moving every CA HS, so a school's gap vs. county is the actionable signal.
Palo Alto High is shrinking (-1.9%) but Santa Clara County is shrinking faster (-6.2%), so Palo Alto High is winning roughly 4.3 pp of relative market share. Combined with 96.6% stability (county median 90.2%), this reflects a school that families actively chose during a market contraction. Replicable model — worth documenting what's working.
65 of 1,921 students who enrolled at Palo Alto High this year didn't maintain continuous enrollment (3.4% 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 9.4 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 — Palo Alto 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: 85.2%
Federal: 3.3%
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 Palo Alto 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).
Palo Alto High — Enrollment & Outcomes Snapshot
Public · vs. 10 most similar nearby schools
- ▸Senior-class enrollment is down 2% (486→477 from 2018 to 2026), tracking the peer-group median of -3%.
- ▸In business terms, this is market-share growth during a market contraction. Santa Clara County's senior population shrank 6% over the same window — Palo Alto High only shrank 2%. So Palo Alto High picked up about 4 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 ~1744 by 2029 — about 84 fewer students than today.
Enrollment projection
That's about 84 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Palo Alto High | Public | 1828 | — | -2% |
| Peer-group median | 54.3% | -3% | ||
| Palo Alto Senior High School | Public | 1828 | 69.9% | -8% |
| Menlo Atherton High School | Public | 2152 | 30.1% | -1% |
| Sequoia High School | Public | 1839 | 21.3% | -5% |
| Woodside High School | Public | 1694 | 31.7% | -2% |
| Henry M. Gunn High | Public | 1606 | — | -16% |
| Los Altos High | Public | 2203 | 54.3% | +4% |
| Fremont High | Public | 2015 | 24.1% | +4% |
| Cupertino High School | Public | 1814 | 77.7% | -13% |
| Homestead High School | Public | 2190 | 54.6% | -1% |
| Monta Vista High School | Public | 1588 | 85.5% | -31% |
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 →
Campus Breakdown — 2024
| Campus | Applicants | Admits | Enrollees | Admit Rate | UC Reach | Yield | Avg GPA (App) | Avg GPA (Adm) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UC San Diego → Selective | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| UC Santa Barbara → Selective | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |