Allen Avenue Elementary, San Dimas CA

Original Research by School Decision on Allen Avenue Elementary

Allen Avenue Elementary serves kindergarten through fifth grade in San Dimas, a mixed-use suburban city in the eastern San Gabriel Valley. The school sits apart from the town's downtown core, which clusters around the Western-themed Bonita Avenue corridor, but the opening of the Foothill Gold Line transit station in 2025 is reshaping development patterns across the district and the city.

The school's enrollment is small, spanning a range of grade levels. The student body is diverse: a majority of students are Hispanic, with substantial shares who are white and Asian. About a third of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, a marker of economic need within the community.

Academic performance, measured by California's CAASPP and science assessments, sits above the midpoint among elementary schools in Los Angeles County school districts. In English language arts, proficiency across tested grades hovers around the middle range, with a slight decline from third to fifth grade. Math shows a similar pattern: third-graders perform somewhat higher, while fifth-grade proficiency drops notably. Science proficiency in fifth grade aligns with overall English language arts results at that grade level. These results reflect the reality that many students are not yet meeting grade-level standards, though the school's overall proficiency index places it in the upper half of its county peer group. A parent wanting deeper understanding of where their child stands relative to these benchmarks, or what support is available for students not yet proficient, would find it useful to speak directly with the school.

The neighborhood itself is characterized by homeownership and a small-town feel despite its suburban density. Housing values are substantial, and the recent opening of the Gold Line station has triggered long-range plans for downtown densification and mixed-use development. The Bonita Unified School District, which operates Allen Avenue, is currently navigating a bond measure on the June 2026 ballot to fund repairs and upgrades across all school sites, which would add property tax obligations to existing bond debt. The district is also adopting an ethnic studies curriculum, with courses beginning in the 2025-2026 school year and anticipating a state requirement that all high school students complete such a course to graduate by 2030.

San Dimas offers modest advantages in walkability and civic amenities around its downtown, though most of daily life is car-dependent. The city sits near the foot of the San Gabriel Mountains, with equestrian culture and parks including the large Bonita Regional Park with its lake, and metro transit now connects residents to Pasadena and downtown Los Angeles by rail. The school district serves a broad attendance area across multiple towns, so a family choosing Allen Avenue would be selecting a school within a larger system experiencing both infrastructure investment and pedagogical change.

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Academic performance

How students perform on state tests, by grade, set against the district.

Math

Grade 367%

School 67% · District 77% · ▼ 10 pts below district

▲ 24 pts above state median · ▲ 21 pts above county median

Grade 456%

School 56% · District 70% · ▼ 14 pts below district

▲ 18 pts above state median · ▲ 15 pts above county median

Grade 546%

School 46% · District 63% · ▼ 17 pts below district

▲ 15 pts above state median · ▲ 12 pts above county median

English language arts

Grade 363%

School 63% · District 70% · ▼ 8 pts below district

▲ 22 pts above state median · ▲ 21 pts above county median

Grade 456%

School 56% · District 67% · ▼ 11 pts below district

▲ 14 pts above state median · ▲ 12 pts above county median

Grade 549%

School 49% · District 74% · ▼ 26 pts below district

▲ 3 pts above state median · ▲ 2 pts above county median

Science

Grade 549%

School 49% · District 54% · ▼ 5 pts below district

▲ 20 pts above state median · ▲ 21 pts above county median

This schoolBonita Unified, same grade

Graduation rate (ACGR) reflects the federally published Adjusted Cohort Graduation Rate for the most recent year available. We refresh this data annually at the close of each academic year in June. The federal source publishes a banded rate (for example, "90-94%") instead of an exact number for cohorts small enough to risk identifying individual students. The state distribution chart, where shown, plots every school in the state with a published rate or band; schools whose rate is federally suppressed are excluded. Where the federal source publishes a band rather than an exact rate, the school is placed within its band using a stable, ID-derived offset, so its position is consistent across visits.

Proficiency by household income

English language arts

Grade 3Lower-income59%Higher-income65%5 pp gap

Grade 4Lower-income44%Higher-income63%19 pp gap

Grade 5Lower-income30%Higher-income66%35 pp gap

Mathematics

Grade 3Lower-income59%Higher-income71%12 pp gap

Grade 4Lower-income39%Higher-income65%26 pp gap

Grade 5Lower-income24%Higher-income66%42 pp gap