Original Research by School Decision on Pacific Beach Elementary School
Pacific Beach Elementary School is a small regular public school serving students in pre-kindergarten through sixth grade in the unincorporated coastal community of Pacific Beach, Washington. The school is part of the North Beach School District No. 64 and is the elementary campus for the immediate area.
The school’s student body is small, reflecting the scale of the community it serves. The student population is predominantly white, with a substantial share of students identifying as American Indian or Alaska Native, a smaller share identifying as Hispanic, and a smaller but present share identifying as two or more races. A large majority of students come from low-income households, as measured by the share qualifying for free or reduced-price lunch.
When it comes to state assessment results, the picture is effectively blank for this school. Washington’s state testing data for Pacific Beach Elementary for the 2024-25 school year was suppressed across all subjects and grade levels. Suppression typically happens when the group of test-takers is too small to reliably report results, which aligns with the school’s very small enrollment per grade. This means there is no publicly available proficiency rate for math, English language arts, or science. A single data point in the multi-year trend file shows a reported overall English language arts proficiency rate for the 2024-25 school year, but that figure is not supported by any of the underlying grade-level data and may be an artifact; the safest read is that a family cannot use test scores to judge this school’s academic performance from the available records. A parent may want to ask the school or district directly for a sense of how students are performing.
The school environment is shaped by its setting. Pacific Beach itself is a very small, low-density census-designated place with a population that has declined slightly over the past several years. It is a car-dependent community where the main draw is the nearby Pacific Beach State Park, offering camping and beach access. Everyday amenities like shops and services are mostly found a mile south in the newer, planned community of Seabrook. The nearest larger town with significant services is about a half-hour drive to the southeast.
A notable structural change for the district is that, as of the 2023-24 school year, sixth-grade students were moved back to Pacific Beach Elementary from the district’s middle school. This means the school now houses a wider grade span than it did before, and families with children transitioning to sixth grade will find them remaining in an elementary setting rather than moving to a secondary school.
Given the absence of test score data, the value of this school for a family will come down to its other attributes. It is a very small, community-rooted school in a quiet coastal setting. The grade reconfiguration means a longer elementary experience for students through sixth grade, a characteristic some families may prefer and others may not. For a parent looking to gauge academic performance, the data provides little to work with, and direct inquiry with the school would be the necessary next step.
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