Compiled from official source data by PlainSchools.
8 public K-12 schools in Palm 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, Palm Springs has more public-school enrollment than 52% of the 4,487 US cities in this directory. Palm Springs sits in the broad middle of the national city distribution rather than at a single obvious extreme. Its scale, average Resource Investment Index, and staffing position need to be read together: a middle placement on one measure does not cancel a stronger or weaker result on another. The percentile panel makes those dimensions explicit, and the school table shows where the city aggregate breaks into materially different campus profiles.
The school portfolio is elementary-weighted
5 of Palm 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 1 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
Palm Springs's reporting schools show 94.4% free-lunch eligibility across measured enrollment, alongside an average 19.6:1 student-teacher ratio. These are separate constraints: one describes the economic context of enrolled students and the other compares student and teacher headcounts. The 16-point gap between Cielo Vista Charter and Cahuilla 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 48%
School count
Top 54%
Resource Index average
31st percentile
Teacher staffing
17th percentile
Palm Springs High accounts for 32.1% of all Palm Springs public-school enrollment
That dominant concentration means Palm 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.
Palm Springs school enrollment varies 499× across entities
Palm Springs school enrollment ranges from 3 students (lowest) to 1,497 students (highest), a spread of 1,494 students. That ratio is an extreme outlier spread — among the widest gaps observed anywhere in this dataset. 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.
Palm Springs operates one school district — a single-district system
Palm 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.
Palm Springs student-teacher ratio is 19.6:1 — 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.
Most racially and ethnically mixed schools in Palm 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 Palm Springs?
Which Palm Springs school has the highest Resource Investment Index? ▼
Cielo Vista Charter has the highest Resource Investment Index among the Palm Springs schools in this federal-data comparison at 44/100. The index summarizes reported staffing, counseling, gifted-program, and attendance inputs; it is not an academic rating.
How many schools are in Palm Springs, CA? ▼
Palm Springs has 8 public schools with a total enrollment of 4,660 students. 1 are charter schools. Average student-teacher ratio: 19.6:1.
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.
