Compiled from official source data by PlainSchools.
8 public K-12 schools in Bell from NCES Common Core of Data: enrollment, grade span, demographics, and Civil Rights Data Collection statistics for every active campus.
According to NCES CCD 2024-25, Bell has more public-school enrollment than 56% of the 4,487 US cities in this directory. Bell Senior High enrolls 40.9% of Bell's public-school students. That is enough concentration for one institution to pull the citywide enrollment, staffing, and Resource Index averages toward its own profile. The smaller campuses below should therefore be compared directly rather than inferred from the headline mean; their grade configurations and program footprints can be materially different even inside the same district.
The school portfolio is elementary-weighted
4 of Bell's 8 listed schools are elementary campuses. That composition means citywide enrollment and staffing averages are influenced more by early-grade operating patterns than by the city's 3 middle and 1 high-school records. Families comparing later grades should rely on those individual rows rather than the all-school mean.
Economic need crosses separate district systems
89.4% of enrollment in reporting Bell schools is eligible for free lunch, while the city list spans 2 districts. That pairing makes a citywide average especially easy to misread: the need measure follows students, but staffing decisions, calendars, program rules, and federal allocations are administered through separate district structures. The 17-point gap between Bell Senior High and Martha Escutia Primary Center shows how much reported resource capacity can vary inside the same municipal label. Compare schools within the same district first, then use the city view to see how those local systems differ.
City enrollment
Top 44%
School count
Top 54%
Resource Index average
10th percentile
Teacher staffing
19th percentile
Bell Senior High accounts for 40.9% of all Bell public-school enrollment
That dominant concentration means Bell-wide averages can mask substantial variation outside the largest entity. Grade level: High. The share measures enrollment concentration only; it does not establish how districts allocate programs, capital, or staff. Enrollment-weighted aggregates give this entity more weight than any smaller peer, while an unweighted entity average treats every record equally.
Bell school enrollment ranges from 179 students (lowest) to 2,088 students (highest), a spread of 1,909 students. That spread reflects typical urban portfolio variation between specialty programs and large neighbourhood schools. Per-school staffing and program breadth can differ sharply at opposite ends of that enrollment range, so the city average should not be treated as a typical campus.
The reported share is above 87.5%, so economic need is widespread across the measured student population. Title I operates under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA, 2015), but its statutory allocation uses additional LEA-level counts and rules not represented by this average. This percentage is an economic-need context measure; it does not establish a Title I award, show dollars received, or describe how funds are distributed among campuses.
Bell student-teacher ratio is 19.1:1 — high (typically associated with larger urban scale or staffing constraints that have widened the headcount gap)
student-teacher ratio is the simplest comparative metric but it does not capture the full picture: the ratio counts FTE classroom teachers against total enrollment, push-in specialists, English-language aides, special-education co-teachers, and counselors are not included in most reporting Higher values may reflect larger urban scale or recent resource constraints that have widened the gap.
13% of the city's listed public-school campuses are reported as charter schools in NCES CCD. Charter status identifies a different governance arrangement; it does not establish admissions availability, academic quality, or the share of city students enrolled in those campuses. Open each school record to compare enrollment and staffing directly.
Which Bell school has the highest Resource Investment Index? ▼
Bell Senior High has the highest Resource Investment Index among the Bell schools in this federal-data comparison at 36/100. The index summarizes reported staffing, counseling, gifted-program, and attendance inputs; it is not an academic rating.
How many schools are in Bell, CA? ▼
Bell has 8 public schools with a total enrollment of 5,100 students. 1 are charter schools. Average student-teacher ratio: 19.1:1.
Data from NCES Common Core of Data (CCD) 2024-25 and Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC) 2021-22. The Resource Investment Index uses reported student-teacher ratio,
counselor access, gifted programs, and attendance; it is not an academic rating. Cities must include at least five schools to be listed. This public-data comparison is for informational purposes:
verify current enrollment, attendance boundaries, and programs with the school district before acting. See the guide to understanding NCES data.
