12th Street Elementary

Set in PORTAGE, Michigan, 12th Street Elementary is an expansive elementary-level community, one of the schools within Portage Public Schools. It enrolls 589 students across grades pre-K through 5. That puts it 60% larger than the typical public school in Michigan, which averages around 369 students.

Within Portage Public Schools, which oversees 14 schools and 8,479 students, 12th Street Elementary is one campus in the system.

In terms of who attends, 12th Street Elementary records that White students make up the majority at 59%. The remainder breaks down as 14% Black, 10% multiracial, 10% Asian, 8% Hispanic. That is noticeably less White than the county at large, where the share is closer to 76%.

On the resource side, On paper, 12th Street Elementary has 31 full-time-equivalent teachers, translating to a class-load average of around 19.0:1. That figure is higher than the state norm's 15.8:1 average. Roughly 21% of students at 12th Street Elementary qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, a commonly cited indicator of low-income enrollment. By comparison, Kalamazoo County runs at roughly 45%, so the school's eligibility rate is lower than the surrounding baseline.

With demographic context factored in, 12th Street Elementary performs roughly as the BeatsExpectations model predicts for a school with this FRL share. The predicted value is around 57.1%, the actual is 52.5%, a residual of -4.7 points.

Across the wider county, community-level numbers for Kalamazoo County indicate median household earnings sit near $72,532, about 41% of the adult population holds a bachelor's degree or above, and roughly 8% of residents live below the federal poverty line. Across Kalamazoo County's 93 public schools (combined enrollment of about 34,151 students), 12th Street Elementary is one campus in the mix.

Portage West Middle School is the nearest neighboring public school, about 1.1 miles from this campus. 8 of the 8 nearest public schools sit inside a five-mile radius. On composite proficiency, 12th Street Elementary comes 3rd of 8 in the immediate cluster, above the nearby-schools average of 48.5%.

Geographically, the school is in an urban area.

Five-year trend. 12th Street Elementary's enrollment has rose 11% since 2018, when it stood at 530 (now 589). The White share of enrollment declined from 68% to 59% over that span.

On the community side, posts here usually surface around fundraisers, lost-and-found posts, and report-card season. Contributors range from current parents to recent graduates and teachers.