Thoreau Elementary

Thoreau Elementary is a K-5 school of medium-sized scale in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, one of the schools within Milwaukee School District, enrolling 353 students in grades pre-K through 8.

Thoreau Elementary is one of 155 schools operated by Milwaukee School District, a district that educates 65,835 students overall.

Demographically, Thoreau Elementary lists that 86% of students identify as Black, making the school strongly Black-majority. Beyond that, the school records 6% Hispanic, 4% multiracial, 3% Asian, 2% White. By comparison, Milwaukee County as a whole is about 26% Black, so the school skews visibly more Black than its surroundings.

Looking at school resources, The school employs 23 full-time-equivalent teachers, for a student-teacher ratio near 15.3:1. That tracks the state average closely. Roughly 96% of students at Thoreau Elementary qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, which schools and policymakers use as a rough income-mix signal. That share is higher than Milwaukee County's rate of about 64%.

On a residual basis (actual vs predicted given the student mix), Thoreau Elementary performs roughly as the BeatsExpectations model predicts for a school with this FRL share. The predicted value is around 18.9%, the actual is 13.6%, a residual of -5.3 points.

In the broader community, ACS estimates for Milwaukee County put the typical household earns roughly $64,435 per year, about 35% of the adult population holds a bachelor's degree or above, and census figures put the poverty rate at about 13%. Across Milwaukee County's 284 public schools (combined enrollment of about 122,496 students), Thoreau Elementary is one campus in the mix.

Nearest neighbor: Brown Deer Middle/High, around 0.3 miles off. Within five miles, there are 8 other public schools. On composite proficiency, Thoreau Elementary comes 5th of 9 in the immediate cluster, behind the nearby-schools average of 19.9%.

Geographically, the school is in an urban area.

Trend over the last 7 years. Thoreau Elementary's enrollment has ticked down 21% since 2018, when it stood at 449 (now 353). Class-load math has fell: from 28.7:1 in 2018 to 15.3:1 in 2025.

On this page, posts here usually surface around open house dates, ride-share offers, and field-trip permission slips. Posting is open to anyone connected to the school.