Park Elementary vs Strawberry Point Elementary

Park Elementary and Strawberry Point Elementary sit just 1.8 miles apart in Mill Valley, California, serving nearly identical grade spans of kindergarten through fifth grade. Park Elementary edges Strawberry Point Elementary by 0.2 points overall — 9.2 versus 9.0 on a 10-point scale — a slim gap that nonetheless translates to a meaningful difference in statewide standing: Park Elementary ranks #172 of 9,533 California schools while Strawberry Point Elementary ranks #298 of 9,533. Both schools place comfortably in California's top 5%, making either a strong choice by any objective measure.

On academic achievement, the two schools are deadlocked: both Park Elementary and Strawberry Point Elementary score 9.3/10, meaning students at each school demonstrate comparable mastery of grade-level content. The gap opens on growth, where Park Elementary scores 9.1/10 against Strawberry Point Elementary's 8.7/10 — a 0.4-point difference indicating that Park Elementary students, on average, make faster academic progress relative to their peers over the course of a school year. For families who weight trajectory and learning velocity alongside raw achievement levels, that delta is the most consequential number on the page.

Enrollment and staffing are closely matched: Park Elementary serves 266 students at a 20.5-to-1 student-teacher ratio, while Strawberry Point Elementary serves 241 students at a 20.1-to-1 ratio. The practical difference in class size is negligible. The most notable demographic divergence is in free and reduced-price lunch eligibility — 3% of Park Elementary students qualify versus 7% at Strawberry Point Elementary. While both figures are low in absolute terms, Strawberry Point Elementary serves a modestly broader economic range within the Mill Valley community.

Both schools operate on the same KG–05 grade structure, so neither offers an earlier or later entry point than the other. The differences that exist — growth score advantage at Park Elementary, slightly broader economic diversity at Strawberry Point Elementary — are the variables most likely to tip a decision for a family that has already identified Mill Valley's elementary tier as the right fit.