PAUSD elementary schools

Most Palo Alto children start public school at one of 12 elementary schools run by the Palo Alto Unified School District. Each one serves kindergarten through fifth grade and most also serve a set attendance area. Two of them, Hoover and Ohlone, are choice schools that families apply to by lottery. This page lists every school with the address the district publishes, explains how attendance areas work and covers the school name changes people still ask about.

For the bigger picture, including middle and high schools, start with our guide to Palo Alto public schools. We do not rank schools or compare test scores. If you want performance data, the state's California School Dashboard reports it for every public school in the same format.

The 12 elementary schools

These names and addresses come from the district's schools directory in October 2026. Two schools use a Stanford mailing address because they sit on Stanford land.

Barron Park is also a TK site. The district's seventh TK location is Greendell School at 4120 Middlefield Road, a campus that runs early learning programs rather than a K to 5 school.

Where the schools sit

The schools are spread fairly evenly across the city, which is why many children walk or bike to class.

• North Palo Alto: Addison and Walter Hays are in the older neighborhoods north of Oregon Expressway. Walter Hays is on Middlefield Road beside Rinconada Park, close to the Junior Museum and Zoo. Duveneck is in the Duveneck/St. Francis area east of Middlefield.
• Stanford lands: Nixon sits on Stanford Avenue near College Terrace and Escondido is on Escondido Road near the graduate housing of the same name.
• Midtown: El Carmelo is on Bryant Street and Palo Verde is on Louis Road. Ohlone is on Amarillo Avenue near Greer Park.
• South Palo Alto: Fairmeadow shares its land with JLS Middle School on East Meadow Drive. Hoover is on East Charleston Road. Juana Briones and Barron Park are in the southwest corner near El Camino Real.

A school close to a house is not always the school assigned to it. Boundaries follow streets in ways that are hard to guess, so always check the address.

How attendance areas work

PAUSD assigns each student a neighborhood school based on the home address. The district's tool for this is the School Finder, linked from its school placement and transfers page. Type in an address and it shows the assigned school.

Clusters

Elementary schools are grouped into clusters. All the schools in a cluster feed the same middle and high schools. The cluster matters in two ways. First, it decides where your child goes after fifth grade, which our middle schools guide explains. Second, it limits where the district can send your child if the neighborhood school is full.

Overflow

When a grade is full at the neighborhood school, the district can place a new student at another school in the same cluster. PAUSD calls this overflow. The district says the student is automatically waitlisted for the neighborhood school and can move back when a spot opens. Families who register late in spring or summer face more risk of overflow, because seats fill in order.

The district is frank about this. Its page for families moving in says it does not publish which schools have space, since that can change within a week or two. Its advice is to choose the home that suits your family. A PAUSD seat is guaranteed. The neighborhood school may not be.

Edges of the district

• Some parts of Palo Alto are outside PAUSD. The Monroe Park area in the far south is served by the Los Altos School District.
• Some parts of Los Altos Hills and Portola Valley are inside PAUSD.
• Families in the Los Altos Hills part of PAUSD can request a transfer to Gardner Bullis Elementary under a joint arrangement with the Los Altos School District.

Hoover and Ohlone

Two elementary schools do not have attendance areas in the usual sense. Families apply to them through the district's choice lottery. PAUSD describes Hoover's approach as a balance of explicit direct instruction with structured, student-centered activities. It describes Ohlone's as an open school philosophy focused on developmental education, with open-ended activities and peer tutoring. Ohlone also has a working farm on campus.

Two language programs run inside neighborhood or choice schools. Mandarin dual immersion is at Ohlone and Spanish dual immersion is at Escondido. Both start in kindergarten. Our choice programs guide covers the lottery, the farm and the immersion programs in detail.

Transitional kindergarten and Young Fives

Transitional kindergarten, or TK, is the first year of a two-year kindergarten program. PAUSD has TK classrooms at seven sites: Barron Park, Duveneck, El Carmelo, Fairmeadow, Greendell, Palo Verde and Walter Hays. TK does not follow the neighborhood school process. The district places TK students at a site in the same cluster as their neighborhood elementary school when space allows. The child then enrolls for kindergarten at the neighborhood school.

Young Fives is a separate program for children who are old enough for kindergarten but not ready for it. It was run at Greendell. The district's TK page says the Young Fives class moves to Hoover Elementary beginning in fall 2026. For the birthday ranges for TK and kindergarten, see our enrollment guide.

School names and the 2018 renamings

People new to town sometimes hear old school names and wonder which school is meant. A few points clear that up.

1. The 2018 renamings were middle schools. In March 2017 the Board of Education voted unanimously to drop the Jordan and Terman names. On March 27, 2018 it voted 5 to 0 to name Jordan Middle School after Frank S. Greene Jr. and Terman Middle School after Ellen Fletcher. The new names took effect in the 2018 to 2019 school year. The namesakes of the old names, David Starr Jordan and Lewis Terman, were leaders in the eugenics movement. No elementary school was renamed in that decision.
2. Older changes. Wikipedia's history of the district notes that Ohlone was called Ohlones until 1971 and stood on East Charleston Road until 1982, where Hoover is now. Palo Verde was called Sequoyah from 1976 until 1982, when it merged with Los Niños and took back its original name.
3. Earlier elementary names. As reported, Duveneck was once Green Gables and Juana Briones was Loma Vista. The Barron Park campus was reportedly Hoover until 1998.
4. Closed schools. At its 1967 enrollment peak the district had many more elementary schools. Former campuses such as Greendell, Garland and Ventura are still standing and used for other purposes.

The district office that handles all of this is Registration Services at 25 Churchill Avenue, next to Palo Alto High School.

Getting to school

PAUSD runs only limited bus service, including routes for the Voluntary Transfer Program (VTP) and special education. Most elementary families walk, bike or drive. The city's Safe Routes to School program maps suggested routes for each campus. Many routes use the city's network of bike boulevards, including the Ellen Fletcher Bicycle Boulevard on Bryant Street, which passes El Carmelo.

Plan for the possibility of overflow before you commit to a commute. If your child is placed at a school across town, the district expects the family to handle the trip.

Before and after school

The district notes that after-school care on its campuses is run by private companies and nonprofits, not by PAUSD. If your child is overflowed to another school, the district advises contacting the care provider at the new school right away. Our after-school programs guide lists the providers the district and its schools name.

Frequently asked questions