Compiled from official source data by PlainSchools.
7 public K-12 schools in Petersburg 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, Petersburg has more public-school enrollment than 51% of the 4,487 US cities in this directory. Petersburg's 7 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.
The school portfolio is elementary-weighted
4 of Petersburg's 7 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.
Economic-need coverage is incomplete
Free-lunch eligibility is reported for schools covering 47.2% of Petersburg's listed enrollment. Because the remaining enrollment is outside that calculation, the measured percentage should not be generalized to every local student. The Resource Investment Index uses other reported federal fields and has its own coverage limits. Treat the city figures as a map of available records: inspect a campus's source fields before using economic need or resource position in a comparison.
City enrollment
Top 49%
School count
Top 65%
Resource Index average
30th percentile
Teacher staffing
55th percentile
Petersburg High accounts for 26.5% of all Petersburg public-school enrollment
That concentration means Petersburg-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.
Petersburg school enrollment varies 3.1× across entities
Petersburg school enrollment ranges from 393 students (lowest) to 1,215 students (highest), a spread of 822 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 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.
Petersburg operates one school district — a single-district system
Petersburg'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.
Petersburg student-teacher ratio is 14.9:1 — near the typical range (US average ~15.7) — citywide staffing is neither unusually lean nor unusually crowded by this measure
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 Variation between sub-units within Petersburg is typically wider than the Petersburg-aggregate figure suggests.
Most racially and ethnically mixed schools in Petersburg
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 Petersburg school has the highest Resource Investment Index? ▼
Lakemont Elementary has the highest Resource Investment Index among the Petersburg schools in this federal-data comparison at 42/100. The index summarizes reported staffing, counseling, gifted-program, and attendance inputs; it is not an academic rating.
How many schools are in Petersburg, VA? ▼
Petersburg has 7 public schools with a total enrollment of 4,582 students. Average student-teacher ratio: 14.9:1.
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.
