Poplar Avenue Elementary

Located at 2075 Poplar Ave., in Oroville, California, Poplar Avenue Elementary is a small K-5 school that serves 321 students (grades K through 5), part of Thermalito Union Elementary. By comparison, California's public schools average about 465 students each, so Poplar Avenue Elementary sits 31% leaner than that benchmark.

Thermalito Union Elementary runs 6 schools in total, collectively educating 1,515 students. Poplar Avenue Elementary is one of those campuses.

On demographics, Poplar Avenue Elementary shows that the most-represented group is Asian (50%), with the rest of the student body spread across multiple groups; the rest comes out to 27% White, 13% Hispanic, 8% multiracial. The wider county runs roughly 6% Asian, putting the school's mix considerably more Asian than the area baseline.

On the resource side, On paper, Poplar Avenue Elementary has 15 full-time-equivalent teachers, translating to a class-load average of around 21.4:1. That figure is tighter than the state norm's 22.3:1 average. An estimated 84% of students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, a commonly cited indicator of low-income enrollment. That share is higher than Butte County's rate of about 63%.

After controlling for student poverty, Poplar Avenue Elementary performs roughly as the BeatsExpectations model predicts for a school with this FRL share. The predicted value is around 29.2%, the actual is 23.4%, a residual of -5.8 points.

Across the wider county, community-level numbers for Butte County indicate median household income runs about $67,928, roughly 32% of adults have completed at least a four-year degree, and the poverty rate sits near 12%. Across Butte County's 96 public schools (combined enrollment of about 29,730 students), Poplar Avenue Elementary is one campus in the mix.

The closest other public school is Siskiyou Avenue Elementary, roughly 0.0 miles away. 8 of the 8 nearest public schools sit inside a five-mile radius. Among the 5 schools in that immediate cluster with test data (this one included), Poplar Avenue Elementary ranks 3rd on composite proficiency, above the local average of 23.0%.

Geographically, the school is in a small-town area.

Looking at the recent track record. Over the past 7-year window, the student count edged up 13%: 284 students in 2018 compared to 321 in 2025. The White share of enrollment fell from 38% to 27% over that span. Class-load math has pulled in: from 24.7:1 in 2018 to 21.4:1 in 2025.

Within the allk12 community for this school, the page collects discussion, questions, and updates around enrollment questions, classroom assignments, and PTA news. The community welcomes input from current and former families.