Tulelake Basin Elementary

As a low-enrollment elementary school in Tulelake, California, Tulelake Basin Elementary serves 270 students from grades K through 6, one of the schools within Tulelake Basin Joint Unified. Enrollment runs roughly 42% below the state mean of about 465.

Tulelake Basin Joint Unified comprises 2 schools with combined enrollment of 479 students; Tulelake Basin Elementary is among them.

On the student-mix side, Tulelake Basin Elementary shows that 77% of the student body identifies as Hispanic; the rest looks like 19% White, 2% multiracial, 2% Native American. That is meaningfully more Hispanic than the county at large, where the share is closer to 14%.

On the income-and-resources front, The school currently runs with 14 full-time-equivalent teachers, for a student-teacher ratio near 19.9:1. Statewide, the average ratio sits near 22.3:1, putting Tulelake Basin Elementary tighter than the state norm the norm. Roughly 85% of students at Tulelake Basin Elementary qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, a number frequently used as a low-income enrollment indicator. That share is noticeably above Siskiyou County's rate of about 65%.

Adjusting for the school's free-and-reduced-lunch share, Tulelake Basin Elementary sits in the middle band of the BeatsExpectations distribution. Schools with this campus's student mix typically land near 29.0%; this one delivers 21.3%.

Around the school, census data for Siskiyou County shows the typical household earns roughly $59,095 per year, 23% of adults hold a bachelor's degree or higher, and census figures put the poverty rate at about 11%. Across Siskiyou County's 52 public schools (combined enrollment of about 6,059 students), Tulelake Basin Elementary is one campus in the mix.

Nearest neighbor: Tulelake High, around 0.4 miles off. Counting just inside five miles, 2 other public schools cluster around Tulelake Basin Elementary. On composite proficiency, Tulelake Basin Elementary comes 7th of 9 in the immediate cluster, behind the nearby-schools average of 31.7%.

Geographically, the school is in a low-density area.

Trend over the last 7 years. Looking back 7 years, enrollment at Tulelake Basin Elementary has climbed 23%, going from 220 students in 2018 to 270 in 2025. Over the same period, the White share increased from 13% to 19%. The student-to-teacher ratio fell from 21.1:1 in 2018 to 19.9:1 today.

On this page, posts here usually surface around enrollment questions, classroom assignments, and PTA news. Parents, students, alumni, and staff are welcome to weigh in.