Compiled from official source data by PlainSchools.
5 public K-12 schools in Foster City 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, Foster City has more public-school enrollment than 23% of the 4,487 US cities in this directory. Bowditch Middle enrolls 35.0% of Foster City'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 Foster City's 5 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 1 middle and 0 high-school records. Families comparing later grades should rely on those individual rows rather than the all-school mean.
The composite and staffing measures point in different directions
Foster City's average Resource Investment Index sits at the 43rd percentile, while its teacher-staffing measure sits at the 7th percentile. The 36-point percentile gap is a reminder that the index is not a class-size score: counselors, gifted-program reporting, and attendance also affect it. Compare those components directly when two schools have similar index totals; the same headline score can arise from a different mix of reported resources.
City enrollment
Top 77%
School count
Top 99%
Resource Index average
43rd percentile
Teacher staffing
7th percentile
Bowditch Middle accounts for 35.0% of all Foster City public-school enrollment
That dominant concentration means Foster City-wide averages can mask substantial variation outside the largest entity. Grade level: Middle. 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.
Foster City school enrollment varies 3.0× across entities
Foster City school enrollment ranges from 306 students (lowest) to 929 students (highest), a spread of 623 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.
Foster City operates one school district — a single-district system
Foster City'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.
Foster City student-teacher ratio is 22.2:1 — 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 Foster City
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 Foster City?
Which Foster City school has the highest Resource Investment Index? ▼
Brewer Island Elementary has the highest Resource Investment Index among the Foster City schools in this federal-data comparison at 52/100. The index summarizes reported staffing, counseling, gifted-program, and attendance inputs; it is not an academic rating.
How many schools are in Foster City, CA? ▼
Foster City has 5 public schools with a total enrollment of 2,651 students. Average student-teacher ratio: 22.2:1.
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.
