Not necessarily. CA education has been seriously downgraded since the 70s.
But, the missions were an important part of the curriculum. 5th grade was devoted to it, and I think we touched on it again in 8th grade.
If someone claims to be a native Californian, ask him which mission he picked for his fourth grade mission report or project. Mine was Nuestra Senora de la Soledad in Monterey County. I still have that report in my archives.
Nowadays, most schools assign kids to build models of their chosen mission, so public libraries have to maintain a lot of books on how to build models of missions in their children’s book collections.