A. An elementary school.

Q. Where is it supposed to be on the show?

A. In Miami, Florida.

Q. When did we see it on the show?

A. Only once, in a short scene in Episode 10 (of Season 4), "Lost Boys".

When Rita arrives at Cody's school, she finds him in the middle of a fight with another young boy.

Rita and the mother of the other kid pull them apart. Cody says that he is angry because the other kid claimed that Dexter sneaked out of the camp site at night because he was afraid.  (In fact, Dexter left in order to kill a guy.)

The other mother says that if her son says it, she believes him.

Q. What is it actually in real life?

A. A middle school.

Q. Where can I find it in real life?

A. This is the Charles MacLay Middle School, a public school located at 12540 Pierce Street, in Pacoima, CA.

That's between Glenoaks Blvd & Borden Ave. Pacoima is located up in the northeast corner of the San Fernando Valley.

The school has its own website at www.maclaymiddle.org, with a good photo on their front page of the same school entrance seen at the start of the "Dexter" scene.

This location is just near two other 4th season locations: Julio's Auto Body. and the "Four Walls, One Heart" build site where Trinity tries to bury a boy in cement.







Above is a screencap from the show.

Below is a photo of the school's main entrance, courtesy of their website at www.maclaymiddle.org.



In the photo above , we are looking south/southeast from the Pierce Street side of the campus.

All the "Dexter" crew had to do was change the sign to read "Elementary School" instead of "Middle School".
(And, I might add, they did a nice job of matching the lettering style used on the side of the school.)




Here is an aerial photo with the route marked. And here is a map link.

Q. How the heck did you figure out where it was?

A.  Schools are usually fairly easy to find.  But this one eluded me at first, because I was looking in the wrong places.

I tried searching in the usual haunts for "Dexter": Long Beach, San Pedro, Hollywood... But had no success.

At the same time, I was also searching for Julio's Auto Body and Trinity's build site, and having equally bad luck with all three.

There was a reason for that lack of success.  All three locations were hidden away where I never really thought to look, way up in Pacoima.

Why travel all the way to Pacoima for a simple school shot?  It appears that they really went there to film the Habitat for Humanity build site, and needed to shoot school & garage scenes while they were there.

The breakthrough came when I found out the location of Julio's.  (Thanks, Rick).

I know that the Dexter crew likes to "cluster shoot", that is, shoot at least two or three different scenes while they're in an area.  So once I found Julio's, I assumed the other missing locations could be nearby.

So, I went looking next for Cody's school in the same general area.  I found it quickly, by simply Googling for schools in Pacoima.