Compiled from official source data by PlainSchools.
8 public K-12 schools in Desert Hot Springs 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, Desert Hot Springs has more public-school enrollment than 65% of the 4,487 US cities in this directory. Desert Hot Springs's average Resource Investment Index falls in the lower portion of the 4,487-city comparison set. The index is a resource snapshot, not an academic grade: it reflects the federal staffing, counselor, gifted-program, and attendance fields available for local campuses. The most useful next step is to open the individual schools below and identify which component is pulling each score down, because the same city average can hide very different campus-level constraints.
The school portfolio is elementary-weighted
5 of Desert Hot Springs'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 2 middle and 1 high-school records. Families comparing later grades should rely on those individual rows rather than the all-school mean.
High measured need meets a thin staffing ratio
Desert Hot Springs's reporting schools show 95.6% free-lunch eligibility across measured enrollment, alongside an average 20.8:1 student-teacher ratio. These are separate constraints: one describes the economic context of enrolled students and the other compares student and teacher headcounts. The 23-point gap between Desert Hot Springs High and Bella Vista Elementary is therefore more useful than the city mean alone. A school with a similar ratio may still report different counselor access, attendance, or gifted-program availability, so open the campus records before drawing conclusions about student support.
City enrollment
Top 35%
School count
Top 54%
Resource Index average
9th percentile
Teacher staffing
12th percentile
Desert Hot Springs High accounts for 26.8% of all Desert Hot Springs public-school enrollment
That concentration means Desert Hot Springs-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.
Desert Hot Springs school enrollment varies 4.2× across entities
Desert Hot Springs school enrollment ranges from 397 students (lowest) to 1,687 students (highest), a spread of 1,290 students. That relatively narrow ratio reflects an unusually homogeneous school portfolio for a city this size. 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.
Desert Hot Springs reports 95.6% free-lunch eligibility
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.
Desert Hot Springs operates one school district — a single-district system
Desert Hot Springs's listed schools share one district boundary, budget authority, and reporting chain. That makes citywide and districtwide governance easier to compare, but it does not make individual campuses uniform: grade configuration, staffing, programs, and student need can still vary materially within the same school district.
Desert Hot Springs student-teacher ratio is 20.8:1 — 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.
Most racially and ethnically mixed schools in Desert Hot Springs
Ranked by the Simpson student-body diversity index (0-100) from NCES race and ethnicity data, where higher means a more evenly mixed student body. It measures mix, not quality.
What do families ask about schools in Desert Hot Springs?
Which Desert Hot Springs school has the highest Resource Investment Index? ▼
Desert Hot Springs High has the highest Resource Investment Index among the Desert Hot Springs schools in this federal-data comparison at 37/100. The index summarizes reported staffing, counseling, gifted-program, and attendance inputs; it is not an academic rating.
How many schools are in Desert Hot Springs, CA? ▼
Desert Hot Springs has 8 public schools with a total enrollment of 6,296 students. Average student-teacher ratio: 20.8:1.
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.
