Hillside Elementary, San Leandro CA

Original Research by School Decision on Hillside Elementary

Hillside Elementary is a small school in San Leandro serving about three to four hundred students from kindergarten through fifth grade. It sits in a mixed-use East Bay city with a long manufacturing heritage and growing tech and health-care employment, where Kaiser Permanente's medical center and transit-oriented development around two BART stations are reshaping the economic and residential landscape.

The school's student body reflects San Leandro's diversity and economic constraints. The plurality of students are Hispanic, with substantial Black, Asian, and multiracial enrollment. A very large share of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, indicating high rates of economic need in the enrollment. Data on students with IEPs and English learners was not available, so the full picture of support needs remains incomplete.

State test results show proficiency that is well below what is typical across the county. In math, overall proficiency across tested grades sits in a low range, with performance weakening sharply in upper grades. English language arts proficiency is similarly modest, while the single science proficiency result in fifth grade was very low. These results place the school in the bottom quartile when compared against other districts in Alameda County. A parent may want to explore with the school what instructional supports and remediation pathways exist for students who are not meeting grade-level benchmarks, and what the school's trajectory looks like.

One relevant context is that the school's parent district, San Lorenzo Unified, was identified in California's accountability system as needing intensive support due to persistent performance disparities affecting several student groups including students with disabilities, African American students, English learners, and Pacific Islander students. In 2023-24, WestEd and the Alameda County Office of Education conducted a Systemic Instructional Review to guide district-wide improvement. This signals ongoing instructional reforms across the district, though whether these have yet shifted outcomes at Hillside itself is not yet visible in the data presented here.

San Leandro itself is a fairly walkable city near downtown and near the BART stations, with civic anchors clustered downtown. The median home value in the 94578 zip code is in the high six figures, and monthly rent median in the mid-range, placing both purchase and rental costs above national median but typical for the region. The housing market has declined modestly year over year. Many San Leandro residents commute to Oakland, Hayward, or San Francisco for work.

The district recently passed a general obligation bond to modernize aging facilities, a multi-year investment families should factor into thinking about facility condition. The district also shifted from at-large to by-trustee-area board elections, meaning school board representation is now tied to specific neighborhood areas rather than city-wide votes.

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Academic performance

How students perform on state tests, by grade, set against the district.

Math

Grade 330%

School 30% · District 32% · ▼ 2 pts below district

▼ 13 pts below state median · ▼ 25 pts below county median

Grade 413%

School 13% · District 31% · ▼ 18 pts below district

▼ 25 pts below state median · ▼ 38 pts below county median

Grade 55%

School 5% · District 20% · ▼ 14 pts below district

▼ 25 pts below state median · ▼ 37 pts below county median

English language arts

Grade 322%

School 22% · District 26% · ▼ 4 pts below district

▼ 19 pts below state median · ▼ 28 pts below county median

Grade 411%

School 11% · District 26% · ▼ 15 pts below district

▼ 31 pts below state median · ▼ 43 pts below county median

Grade 519%

School 19% · District 28% · ▼ 8 pts below district

▼ 26 pts below state median · ▼ 38 pts below county median

Science

Grade 59%

School 9% · District 18% · ▼ 9 pts below district

▼ 20 pts below state median · ▼ 31 pts below county median

This schoolSan Lorenzo Unified, same grade

Graduation rate (ACGR) reflects the federally published Adjusted Cohort Graduation Rate for the most recent year available. We refresh this data annually at the close of each academic year in June. The federal source publishes a banded rate (for example, "90-94%") instead of an exact number for cohorts small enough to risk identifying individual students. The state distribution chart, where shown, plots every school in the state with a published rate or band; schools whose rate is federally suppressed are excluded. Where the federal source publishes a band rather than an exact rate, the school is placed within its band using a stable, ID-derived offset, so its position is consistent across visits.