National city placement
One campus shapes the city average
According to NCES CCD 2024-25, La Palma has more public-school enrollment than 49% of the 4,487 US cities in this directory. John F. Kennedy High enrolls 45.6% of La Palma's public-school students. That is enough concentration for one institution to pull the citywide enrollment, staffing, and Resource Index averages toward its own profile. The smaller campuses below should therefore be compared directly rather than inferred from the headline mean; their grade configurations and program footprints can be materially different even inside the same district.
The school portfolio is elementary-weighted
3 of La Palma's 5 listed schools are elementary campuses. That composition means citywide enrollment and staffing averages are influenced more by early-grade operating patterns than by the city's 1 middle and 1 high-school records. Families comparing later grades should rely on those individual rows rather than the all-school mean.
The composite and staffing measures point in different directions
La Palma's average Resource Investment Index sits at the 73rd percentile, while its teacher-staffing measure sits at the 8th percentile. The 65-point percentile gap is a reminder that the index is not a class-size score: counselors, gifted-program reporting, and attendance also affect it. Compare those components directly when two schools have similar index totals; the same headline score can arise from a different mix of reported resources.
