El Portal Elementary

Located at 200 North Nada St., in La Habra, California, El Portal Elementary is a moderately sized primary school that caters to 469 students (grades K through 6), part of Lowell Joint.

Lowell Joint comprises 6 schools with combined enrollment of 2,980 students; El Portal Elementary is among them.

For racial and ethnic makeup, El Portal Elementary reports that the largest single group is Hispanic, at 67% of enrollment. Other groups include 18% White, 7% Asian, 6% multiracial, 3% Black. By comparison, Orange County as a whole is about 34% Hispanic, so the school skews meaningfully more Hispanic than its surroundings.

Looking at school resources, Staff filings list 20 full-time-equivalent teachers, which works out to roughly 23.4:1 students per teacher. That figure is higher than the state norm's 22.3:1 average. About 63% of enrolled students meet the income threshold for free or reduced-price lunch, a commonly cited indicator of low-income enrollment.

On a residual basis (actual vs predicted given the student mix), El Portal Elementary performs roughly as the BeatsExpectations model predicts for a school with this FRL share. The predicted value is around 42.1%, the actual is 56.0%, a residual of +13.9 points.

Zooming out to the county, the surrounding county (Orange County) records that the typical household earns roughly $116,289 per year, about 44% of the adult population holds a bachelor's degree or above, and census figures put the poverty rate at about 7%. In all, Orange County runs 649 public schools (combined enrollment of about 430,458 students), of which El Portal Elementary is one.

The closest other public school is La Habra High, roughly 0.6 miles away. 8 of the 8 nearest public schools sit inside a five-mile radius. Among the 9 schools in that immediate cluster with test data (this one included), El Portal Elementary ranks 1st on composite proficiency, ahead of the local average of 42.3%.

Geographically, the school is in a bedroom-community area.

Five-year trend. El Portal Elementary's enrollment has edged down 12% since 2018, when it stood at 533 (now 469). Over the same period, the White share contracted from 24% to 18%. The student-to-teacher ratio pulled in from 26.6:1 in 2018 to 23.4:1 today.

In the discussion threads here, recent activity here tends to focus on enrollment questions, classroom assignments, and PTA news. The community welcomes input from current and former families.