About La Mesa School

Academics

At La Mesa, we strive to be a place where every child is supported in their learning and where every child is treated with respect and care.  We will continue to create an environment and culture that is both student-centered and solution based. Our students receive a rigorous, challenging education set with high standards. Lessons are centered around student needs and teachers work hard to diversify instruction, providing our students several ways to demonstrate their learning. Our latest state test scores show that our students are outperforming the state average for both ELA and Math.

Community

At La Mesa, we have the unique opportunity to serve a diverse student population. The majority of the school population consists of military connected families. We have students from all over the world. This includes, but is not limited to: Mongolia, Kenya, Italy, Germany, Georgia, Chile, Malaysia, Ecuador, Korea, Afghanistan, Belgium, Russia, Japan, Mexico, and Pakistan. With over 40 primary languages and dialects on our campus, we are proud to say that we are the most diverse campus in the school district!

Our parent community is actively involved and invested in the development of our students’ academic and social skills. At La Mesa, we view each incident of conflict as an opportunity for learning. Our Positive Behavior System asks our students to examine their own actions and evaluate how those actions affect others in our community.

La Mesa understands that our military-connected students have distinct educational experiences.  La Mesa was recognized as a Purple Star School, which highlights the ways that we consistently create policies that have a positive impact on military-connected students, both academically and socio-emotionally.  

Student Population

Our population has increased! As of the 2023-2024 school year, we have transitioned to a TK-8th grade school. We have added a new building of classrooms, and our campus is still under construction to support our growing enrollment. We are so grateful to have expanded and are looking forward to our campus completion soon.

Attendance

Good attendance and on-­time arrival are crucial to your child’s success at school. Students are expected to attend school daily per our weekly schedule:

If your child is going to miss school for any reason, please call the school: (831) 649-1872 and leave a message as needed. When your child returns to school, please provide a note of explanation. 

Please try not to schedule family trips during the 2024-2025 MPUSD TK-8 School Year. We lose precious school funding from the state and, more importantly, your student misses critical instruction!

Absences

State policies state that student absences may be excused for the following reasons: illness, medical and dental appointments, and family bereavement. The MPUSD Parent/Guardian Student Information Handbook provides more details as well as the actions that are required of each school for truancy interventions. 

State Attendance Notices are all automatically triggered based on student absences.  Please note that our site does not create attendance policies, we simply manage the process that is created by the state.  

Truancy is defined by the state as: 3 absences without a valid excuse or 3 times late to class by 30 minutes.  

Chronic Absentee is defined as “missing 10% of school of the school year for any reason, with at least 9 absences (excused or unexcused). 

Excessive Excused Absences: All excessive absences, whether excused or unexcused, place students at risk of missing valuable instructional time.  After 14 days, absences cannot be excused without a doctor's note or verification of illness from a staff member. 

**If your family receives an attendance notice, and you would like to schedule an appointment to discuss, please contact our Family Liaison to schedule an appointment by calling the front office: 831-649-1872