Volta Elementary

Volta Elementary is one of the compact primary schools in Los Banos, California, one of the schools within Los Banos Unified, with 387 students on its rolls from grades K through 6.

Los Banos Unified comprises 16 schools with combined enrollment of 11,020 students; Volta Elementary is among them.

On demographics, Volta Elementary logs that 86% of students identify as Hispanic, making the school strongly Hispanic-majority; the rest consists of 9% White, 3% Asian. By comparison, Merced County as a whole is about 63% Hispanic, so the school skews visibly more Hispanic than its surroundings.

On the resource side, On paper, Volta Elementary has 16 full-time-equivalent teachers, translating to a class-load average of around 24.2:1. That figure is higher than the state norm's 22.3:1 average. Roughly 89% of students at Volta Elementary qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, which schools and policymakers use as a rough income-mix signal. Set against Merced County (around 81%), the school's rate is north of typical.

On a demographically-adjusted basis, Volta Elementary performs roughly as the BeatsExpectations model predicts for a school with this FRL share. The predicted value is around 26.2%, the actual is 30.2%, a residual of +4.0 points.

Across the wider county, community-level numbers for Merced County indicate the typical household earns roughly $65,510 per year, roughly 15% of adults have completed at least a four-year degree, and roughly 16% of residents live below the federal poverty line. Volta Elementary is one of 117 public schools in Merced County (combined enrollment of about 59,456 students).

Creekside Junior High is the nearest neighboring public school, about 4.4 miles from this campus. Within five miles, there are 6 other public schools. Ranking that nearby cluster on reported proficiency puts Volta Elementary at 2nd of 6; the average score across the group is 26.4%.

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

Five-year trend. Over the past 7-year window, the student count contracted 4%: 403 students in 2018 compared to 387 in 2025. The White share of enrollment shrank from 22% to 9% over that span. Class-load math has tightened: from 31.0:1 in 2018 to 24.2:1 in 2025.

On this page, the feed for Volta Elementary typically covers science fair prep, picture-day reminders, and bus-route questions. Contributors range from current parents to recent graduates and teachers.