Houdini Elementary

As a high-enrollment K-5 school in Appleton, Wisconsin, Houdini Elementary educates 501 students from grades pre-K through 5, part of Appleton Area School District. Compared to the state average of about 323 students per school, that is 55% above typical.

Appleton Area School District runs 38 schools in total, collectively educating 14,994 students. Houdini Elementary is one of those campuses.

On the student-mix side, Houdini Elementary records that the largest single group is White, at 64% of enrollment. The remainder looks like 12% Hispanic, 12% Asian, 9% multiracial, 3% Black. That is visibly less White than the county at large, where the share is closer to 86%.

On the income-and-resources front, Houdini Elementary reports 36 full-time-equivalent teachers, putting the student-to-teacher ratio at about 13.9:1. That figure is tighter than the state norm's 14.7:1 average. Roughly 34% of students at Houdini Elementary qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, a number frequently used as a low-income enrollment indicator.

On a residual basis (actual vs predicted given the student mix), Houdini Elementary performs roughly as the BeatsExpectations model predicts for a school with this FRL share. The predicted value is around 56.7%, the actual is 55.8%, a residual of -0.9 points.

Around the school, census data for Outagamie County shows the typical household earns roughly $85,069 per year, roughly 33% of adults have completed at least a four-year degree, and the poverty rate sits near 4%. Across Outagamie County's 73 public schools (combined enrollment of about 31,330 students), Houdini Elementary is one campus in the mix.

Nearest neighbor: Odyssey-Magellan, around 1.2 miles off. Within five miles, there are 8 other public schools. On composite proficiency, Houdini Elementary comes 3rd of 7 in the immediate cluster, higher than the nearby-schools average of 50.0%.

The school occupies a residential site.

Looking at the recent track record. Over the past 7-year window, the student count shrank 14%: 584 students in 2018 compared to 501 in 2025. White enrollment moved from 82% to 64% across the same window. Class-load math has pulled in: from 16.3:1 in 2018 to 13.9:1 in 2025.

On allk12, posts here usually surface around science fair prep, picture-day reminders, and bus-route questions. Anyone with firsthand experience at this school can post or comment.