Compiled from official source data by PlainSchools.
9 public K-12 schools in Centralia 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, Centralia has more public-school enrollment than 33% of the 4,487 US cities in this directory. Centralia 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
5 of Centralia'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 2 high-school records. Families comparing later grades should rely on those individual rows rather than the all-school mean.
A small portfolio contains radically different campus scales
Centralia lists only 9 schools, yet reported enrollment runs from 59 to 941 students, a 16-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.
City enrollment
Top 67%
School count
Top 46%
Resource Index average
59th percentile
Teacher staffing
54th percentile
Centralia High School accounts for 28.4% of all Centralia public-school enrollment
That dominant concentration means Centralia-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.
Centralia school enrollment varies 16× across entities
Centralia school enrollment ranges from 59 students (lowest) to 941 students (highest), a spread of 882 students. That spread reflects typical urban portfolio variation between specialty programs and large neighbourhood schools. 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.
Centralia operates one school district — a single-district system
Centralia'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.
Centralia student-teacher ratio is 15.0:1 — 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 Centralia is typically wider than the Centralia-aggregate figure suggests.
Most racially and ethnically mixed schools in Centralia
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 Centralia school has the highest Resource Investment Index? ▼
Edison Elementary has the highest Resource Investment Index among the Centralia schools in this federal-data comparison at 54/100. The index summarizes reported staffing, counseling, gifted-program, and attendance inputs; it is not an academic rating.
How many schools are in Centralia, WA? ▼
Centralia has 9 public schools with a total enrollment of 3,313 students. Average student-teacher ratio: 15:1.
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.
