Little Lake School District is named for Little Lake (
La Laguna Chiquita on an 1862 map of
Los Nietos), built over in the 20th century. The first
one-room school was opened in 1873, although a lease with the Los Angeles Pioneer Oil Co. for exploratory drilling is dated 1865. After the bridge across the lake washed out, the schoolhouse was replaced in 1882 with a two-room building farther from the lake, on Little Lake Road (now Florence Avenue in
Santa Fe Springs). A bell turret was added in 1889. In 1919 this school was replaced by an H-shaped concrete building with a tile roof, to which an auditorium in Spanish style was added in 1933. The old building was auctioned for $800; the bell was retained by the school district. Enrollment grew rapidly after World War II, increasing to 210 in 1949 when
kindergarten was offered for the first time, doubling by the following year, and increasing from 2,300 to 4,938 in 1952–53. After three of its nine schools were placed under state sanctions in 2001 for poor academic performance, the district instituted a coordinated system of standards-based instruction in those schools, extending the program in 2003–08 to its other six schools. In 2014 local control of the district was reinstated, and it has since won awards including the naming of all the schools to the Educational Results Partnership Honor Roll in 2021. ==Schools==