About Sonoma County Schools

Sonoma County is divided into 40 school districts for kindergarten through twelfth-grade (K-12) educational services. There are 31 elementary, 3 high school, and 6 unified districts. Unified districts operate both elementary and secondary schools for the students residing within their boundaries.

The smallest district in the county, Kashia, is located in a rural area and has 9 students. The largest district, Santa Rosa City High, enrolls nearly 12,000 students in the county’s most populous city. Fifteen districts enroll less than 500 students; only four serve more than 5,000 students.

Although many districts are small in size, over 71,000 students attend the 179 public schools that are located in Sonoma County. There are 99 elementary, 24 middle/junior high, and 21 high schools, as well as 29 alternative schools and 6 independent study schools. Twenty-eight of these schools are charter schools. Sixty-nine Sonoma County schools have been named California Distinguished Schools and nine have been recognized as National Blue Ribbon Schools.

Enrollment in Sonoma County schools has been slowly decreasing since 2001, with some districts more impacted than others. This enrollment trend is not unique to Sonoma County; nearly half of all school districts in California are seeing enrollment declines.

Another enrollment trend in our county is the growing diversity of students in public schools. Today, over one-third of students are Latino, 23 percent are in the process of learning English, and 37 percent receive free or reduced-price meals (an indicator of poverty). Approximately 12 percent of students receive special education services and eight percent are in gifted programs.

On all academic indicators – the state STAR tests, high school exit exam, Academic Performance Index (API), Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP), and Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) – Sonoma County consistently scores above the state average and has shown positive growth over the years.