National city placement
Compact, single-district system
According to NCES CCD 2024-25, Le Mars has more public-school enrollment than 15% of the 4,487 US cities in this directory. Le Mars's 6 listed schools all sit inside one district, creating a compact governance structure with one budget, board, and reporting chain. That makes citywide comparisons cleaner than in places split across several districts, but it does not make the campuses interchangeable: elementary, middle, and high-school staffing needs differ. The ranked list is best read as variation inside one system rather than competition among separate local authorities.
A full K–12 ladder sits inside the city boundary
Le Mars's list includes 2 elementary, 1 middle, and 2 high-school campuses, plus 1 combined-grade record. The city average spans every major grade stage, so the ranked table is more informative when read within level than as one interchangeable queue.
A small portfolio contains radically different campus scales
Le Mars lists only 6 schools, yet reported enrollment runs from 39 to 662 students, a 17-fold range. In a portfolio this compact, the smallest record may be a specialized or nonstandard setting rather than a miniature version of the largest campus. That distinction affects how ratios and program fields should be read. Compare similarly configured grade levels first; combining the extremes into one city average conceals more than it explains.
