Hermosa Beach City School District is a kindergarten through eighth grade district serving roughly 1,500 students. It has no high school of its own, and what happens at ninth grade is the single most misunderstood fact in South Bay school geography.
Hermosa Beach eighth graders choose their high school. They may attend either Mira Costa High School in Manhattan Beach or Redondo Union High School in Redondo Beach, and the election is made each year. The choice belongs to every Hermosa Beach resident regardless of where in the city they live. There is no dividing line, and Hermosa does not simply feed Redondo Union.
The arrangement dates to November 1992, when voters in Hermosa Beach, Manhattan Beach and Redondo Beach passed Proposition V by 59.1 percent, dissolving the South Bay Union High School District. Manhattan Beach and Redondo Beach became unified districts covering kindergarten through twelfth grade. Hermosa Beach remained an elementary district. The enabling legislation, AB 325 (Felando), Chapter 24, Statutes of 1992, permits students living within Hermosa Beach City School District boundaries to attend either neighboring unified district.
How the district is organized
Hermosa Beach runs one school across three sites rather than separate neighborhood schools, so there are no attendance boundaries inside the city and no address lookup is needed. Every child in the district attends the same school for their grade band.
Hermosa Beach Preschool at View, ages three and four.
Hermosa View School, transitional kindergarten through first grade.
Hermosa Vista School, second through fourth grade.
Hermosa Valley School, fifth through eighth grade.
Inter-district permits are limited. Applications are not first come, and a lottery establishes a prioritized waitlist.
Live CRMLS listings, updated through the day.
A boundary map shows how a district is drawn today. Boundaries are redrawn, choice and lottery programs move students, and no address guarantees a seat at a particular school. Confirm any specific address with the district before it factors into a purchase.
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