General Information

  • Grades Served: Preschool-6
  • Address: 350 Loma Alta Drive, Santa Barbara, CA 93109
  • Phone: (805) 966-9926
  • Fax: (805) 899-3286
  • TDD: (805) 966-9926 x150
  • Principal: Daisy Ochoa
  • School Mascot: Bears

School Colors: Blue and White

School Profile

McKinley Elementary School, spectacularly situated overlooking the Santa Barbara coast, was refurbished and reopened in September 1986. The school, built in 1932, was the focal point for the Santa Barbara mesa for many years and now serves the lower west side of the city. Our school colors are blue and white and our mascot is the bears! We serve TK-sixth grade on our campus. Our goal is to create strong systems focused on academic excellence and positive social emotional well-being. Eighty-eight percent of our students identify as Latino/a/x. 87%  of our students are socioeconomically disadvantaged, 19% are homeless, and 51% are emergent multilingual learners.

McKinley Elementary is in its third year of implementing our dual language immersion (DLI) program with Spanish as the target language. DLI integrates a balanced number of native speakers of a partner language (e.g. Spanish), native speakers of English, and bilingual students in the same classroom. Students are immersed in both languages, learning language and content simultaneously. McKinley’s Dual Language Immersion program is a 90-10 model, starting out in TK and Kindergarten with 90% of instruction given in Spanish and 10% in English. With each grade after Kindergarten, instructional time in English will increase by 10% and instructional time in Spanish will decrease by 10% until instructional time is divided evenly, or 50% of the day in Spanish and 50% of the day in English.