Original Research by School Decision on Margaret J. Kemp
Margaret J. Kemp serves grades seven through twelve as an alternative school operated by the San Mateo County Office of Education in San Mateo. It is a public school, not a charter.
The school currently enrolls a very small number of students, concentrated in grades eleven and twelve. The enrollment data available shows only a handful of students across the upper grades, with minimal representation in earlier high school years. Given this size, state testing data for recent years has been suppressed by California due to the small number of test-takers, and this is typical for alternative schools serving specialized or smaller student populations. The one available testing result, from nearly two decades ago, is too old to reflect current academic performance.
The student body is reported to be predominantly Hispanic, with a smaller portion identifying as white. No data on free-or-reduced-price lunch eligibility, English learner status, or students receiving special education services were available in the records.
As an alternative school, Margaret J. Kemp sits outside the standard comprehensive high school model. Alternative schools serve students whose needs or circumstances differ from mainstream settings, and may address credit recovery, behavioral or attendance challenges, pregnancy and parenting students, students with prior justice involvement, or other individualized pathways. The school's programmatic details, curriculum offerings, staffing, or support services are not documented in the available data. A parent interested in this school would want to contact the San Mateo County Office of Education or the school directly to understand its specific mission, student population, daily schedule, course offerings, and what kind of academic or personal circumstances it is designed to serve.
San Mateo itself is a mid-sized Bay Area city with a walkable downtown, high median household income, and very high housing costs. The school is located in a community where home values and rents are well above state and national medians, though the economic context matters less for a county office school than it would for a typical neighborhood public school. San Mateo has robust public transit via Caltrain and SamTrans buses, and the city has been developing higher-density housing near transit corridors rather than sprawling outward.
No graduation rate data, chronic absenteeism figures, or civil rights reports were available for this school. These gaps likely reflect both the small enrollment and the alternative nature of the school.
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