Compiled from official source data by PlainSchools.
12 public K-12 schools in Tupelo 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, Tupelo has more public-school enrollment than 70% of the 4,487 US cities in this directory. Tupelo 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
8 of Tupelo's 12 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.
The composite and staffing measures point in different directions
Tupelo's average Resource Investment Index sits at the 40th percentile, while its teacher-staffing measure sits at the 88th percentile. The 48-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 30%
School count
Top 31%
Resource Index average
40th percentile
Teacher staffing
88th percentile
Tupelo High School accounts for 29.5% of all Tupelo public-school enrollment
That dominant concentration means Tupelo-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.
Tupelo school enrollment varies 6.8× across entities
Tupelo school enrollment ranges from 312 students (lowest) to 2,123 students (highest), a spread of 1,811 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.
The reported share sits between 62.5% and 75%, above a simple majority but below the highest descriptive band used here. 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.
Tupelo operates one school district — a single-district system
Tupelo'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.
Tupelo student-teacher ratio is 12.1:1 — low (typically associated with smaller schools or per-school staffing investment that often correlates with stronger per-student supports)
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 Lower values often correlate with smaller scale and population characteristics rather than higher resource budgets per se.
Most racially and ethnically mixed schools in Tupelo
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.
Which Tupelo school has the highest Resource Investment Index? ▼
Parkway Elementary School has the highest Resource Investment Index among the Tupelo schools in this federal-data comparison at 48/100. The index summarizes reported staffing, counseling, gifted-program, and attendance inputs; it is not an academic rating.
How many schools are in Tupelo, MS? ▼
Tupelo has 12 public schools with a total enrollment of 7,192 students. Average student-teacher ratio: 12.1:1.
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.
