Compiled from official source data by PlainSchools.
9 public K-12 schools in St.Louis 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, St.Louis has more public-school enrollment than 10% of the 4,487 US cities in this directory. St.Louis'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 St.Louis's 9 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.
High measured need meets a thin staffing ratio
St.Louis's reporting schools show 79.1% free-lunch eligibility across measured enrollment, alongside an average 28.4:1 student-teacher ratio. These are separate constraints: one describes the economic context of enrolled students and the other compares student and teacher headcounts. The 49-point gap between Mckelvey Primary and The Leadership School 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 90%
School count
Top 46%
Resource Index average
11th percentile
Teacher staffing
1st percentile
Atlas Elementary accounts for 23.6% of all St.Louis public-school enrollment
That concentration means St.Louis-wide averages can mask substantial variation outside the largest entity. Grade level: Combined. 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.
St.Louis school enrollment varies 6.7× across entities
St.Louis school enrollment ranges from 64 students (lowest) to 431 students (highest), a spread of 367 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 is at least 75%, indicating a high concentration of measured economic need. 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.
St.Louis operates 9 school districts — among the most fragmented governance structures in the country
Each school district has independent budgeting, hiring, and service delivery authority. The fragmentation reflects historical patterns of inter-municipal boundary lines that pre-date modern city growth, students in different parts of the same city can attend different districts with different per-pupil spending, calendars, and graduation requirements. Per-region variation is largest in fragmented systems because each school district sets its own budget, contracts, and priorities without higher-level coordination above the regulatory floor.
St.Louis student-teacher ratio is 28.4:1 — well above typical (typically associated with unusually large scale or acute resource constraints)
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 Values this far above typical often signal acute resource constraints or a structurally different scale than most peers — worth reading alongside the underlying counts, not the ratio alone.
56% 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 St.Louis
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 St.Louis school has the highest Resource Investment Index? ▼
Mckelvey Primary has the highest Resource Investment Index among the St.Louis schools in this federal-data comparison at 49/100. The index summarizes reported staffing, counseling, gifted-program, and attendance inputs; it is not an academic rating.
How many schools are in St.Louis, MO? ▼
St.Louis has 9 public schools with a total enrollment of 1,829 students. 5 are charter schools. Average student-teacher ratio: 28.4:1.
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.
