Steele Canyon High School
📄 Shareable scorecard →Compare with peers
Most similar nearby schools
Grossmont High School → Literacy First Charter → Granite Hills High → Valhalla High School → Olympian High School → Compare all similar →Enrollment trend & projection
If this trend holds (+0.2%/yr, Total enrollment)
At per-pupil funding of $ / student:
| Horizon | Projected Total enrollment | Change | Funding impact / yr |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 yr (2027) | ~2,242 | +5 | $0 |
| 3 yr (2029) | ~2,253 | +16 | $0 |
| 5 yr (2031) | ~2,264 | +27 | $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 Diego County baseline — the demographic tide is moving every CA HS, so a school's gap vs. county is the actionable signal.
Steele Canyon High School is shrinking (-1.5%) but San Diego County is shrinking faster (-7.8%), so Steele Canyon High School is winning roughly 6.3 pp of relative market share. Combined with 96.0% stability (county median 88.5%), this reflects a school that families actively chose during a market contraction. Replicable model — worth documenting what's working.
90 of 2,226 students who enrolled at Steele Canyon High School this year didn't maintain continuous enrollment (4.0% 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 5.5 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 — Grossmont 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: 48.9%
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 Grossmont 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).
-6.9 pp vs. peer median (21.6%) · Ranked #7 of 9 similar schools
18.5%
53.3%
14.7%
Higher than 40% of California high schools (1105 ranked, ≥50 seniors)
Steele Canyon High School's UC Reach of 14.7% is below the California median (18.5%). The top 10% of CA schools achieve 53.3% or higher.
Overall, Steele Canyon High School's UC Reach is higher than 40% of California high schools (1105 ranked).
Steele Canyon High School — Enrollment & Outcomes Snapshot
Public · Spring Valley · vs. 10 most similar nearby schools
- ▸On UC Reach, Steele Canyon High School sits near the bottom of its similar-school group (ranked #7 of 9): 15% vs. a peer median of 22%.
- ▸Its UC Reach has slipped 2 points since 2018 — worth watching.
- ▸Senior-class enrollment is down 2% (520→512 from 2018 to 2026), outpacing the peer-group median of -11%.
- ▸In business terms, this is market-share growth during a market contraction. San Diego County's senior population shrank 8% over the same window — Steele Canyon High School only shrank 2%. So Steele Canyon High School picked up about 6 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.
- ▸Enrollment has been growing (+0.2%/yr); projects to ~2253 by 2029.
Enrollment projection
Your school vs. its 10 most similar nearby schools
| School | Type | Size | UC Reach | Enroll. trend |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Steele Canyon High School | Public | 2237 | 14.7% | -2% |
| Peer-group median | 21.6% | -11% | ||
| Grossmont High School | Public | 2221 | 9.1% | -9% |
| Literacy First Charter | Public | 2110 | — | -14% |
| Granite Hills High | Public | 2412 | 8.8% | +7% |
| Valhalla High School | Public | 1692 | 17.5% | -18% |
| Olympian High School | Public | 2216 | 30.3% | -18% |
| Bonita Vista High School | Public | 2038 | 29.4% | -23% |
| Eastlake High School | Public | 2585 | 21.3% | -30% |
| Helix High School | Public | 2571 | 26.9% | +2% |
| Otay Ranch High School | Public | 2408 | 22.0% | -7% |
| Henry High | Public | 2532 | — | +20% |
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 | 3.94 | 6.1% | 11.9% | -5.8pp | Under |
| UCLA | 3.88 | 7.4% | 9.0% | -1.5pp | On target |
| UC San Diego | 3.80 | 20.7% | 25.0% | -4.3pp | On target |
| UC Santa Barbara | 3.82 | 25.0% | 26.8% | -1.8pp | On target |
| UC Irvine | 3.82 | 8.5% | 20.4% | -11.9pp | Under |
| UC Davis | 3.93 | 43.8% | 32.4% | +11.4pp | Over |
Where Steele Canyon High School sits vs. all California schools ⓘ
Overall, this school admits its UC applicants in line with what their GPAs predict (17.3% actual vs. 20.5% 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 | 66 | 4 | — | 6.1% | 0.8% | — | 3.94 | — |
| UCLA → Elite | 81 | 6 | 4 | 7.4% | 1.1% | 66.7% | 3.88 | 4.30 |
| UC San Diego → Selective | 116 | 24 | 13 | 20.7% | 4.6% | 54.2% | 3.80 | 4.26 |
| UC Santa Barbara → Selective | 64 | 16 | — | 25.0% | 3.0% | — | 3.82 | 4.27 |
| UC Irvine → Selective | 71 | 6 | — | 8.5% | 1.1% | — | 3.82 | 4.01 |
| UC Davis → | 48 | 21 | 7 | 43.8% | 4.0% | 33.3% | 3.93 | 4.21 |