Compiled from official source data by PlainSchools.
5 public K-12 schools in Penfield 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, Penfield has more public-school enrollment than 46% of the 4,487 US cities in this directory. Penfield Senior High School enrolls 35.1% of Penfield'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
3 of Penfield'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 1 high-school records. Families comparing later grades should rely on those individual rows rather than the all-school mean.
Campus spread matters more than the city mean
The 15-point gap between Bay Trail Middle School and Cobbles Elementary School shows the range hidden by Penfield's average Resource Investment Index. The city figure is useful for national placement, but families ultimately choose among campuses with different grade spans, enrollment, district affiliations, and reported support fields. Start with schools serving the relevant grade level, then compare the index components rather than assuming the city average describes any one classroom.
City enrollment
Top 54%
School count
Top 99%
Resource Index average
55th percentile
Teacher staffing
84th percentile
Penfield Senior High School accounts for 35.1% of all Penfield public-school enrollment
That dominant concentration means Penfield-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.
Penfield school enrollment varies 3.0× across entities
Penfield school enrollment ranges from 479 students (lowest) to 1,442 students (highest), a spread of 963 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.
Penfield operates one school district — a single-district system
Penfield'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.
Penfield student-teacher ratio is 12.5:1 — 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 Penfield
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 Penfield school has the highest Resource Investment Index? ▼
Bay Trail Middle School has the highest Resource Investment Index among the Penfield schools in this federal-data comparison at 51/100. The index summarizes reported staffing, counseling, gifted-program, and attendance inputs; it is not an academic rating.
How many schools are in Penfield, NY? ▼
Penfield has 5 public schools with a total enrollment of 4,106 students. Average student-teacher ratio: 12.5:1.
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.
