Compiled from official source data by PlainSchools.
7 public K-12 schools in Merrill 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, Merrill has more public-school enrollment than 24% of the 4,487 US cities in this directory. Merrill'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 listed grade span is structurally narrow
Merrill's 7 listed schools do not form a conventional mix of elementary, middle, and high-school campuses. The missing or thin grade bands make all-school city averages less representative of a typical K–12 pathway; district boundaries and nearby-city options may matter more for the grades not well represented here.
A small portfolio contains radically different campus scales
Merrill lists only 7 schools, yet reported enrollment runs from 31 to 756 students, a 24-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 76%
School count
Top 65%
Resource Index average
26th percentile
Teacher staffing
36th percentile
Merrill High accounts for 28.1% of all Merrill public-school enrollment
That dominant concentration means Merrill-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.
Merrill school enrollment varies 24× across entities
Merrill school enrollment ranges from 31 students (lowest) to 756 students (highest), a spread of 725 students. That spread is wider than typical and predicts noticeable gaps in service quality between the highest and lowest areas. 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.
Merrill operates one school district — a single-district system
Merrill'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.
Merrill student-teacher ratio is 16.7:1 — 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 Merrill is typically wider than the Merrill-aggregate figure suggests.
29% 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 Merrill
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 Merrill school has the highest Resource Investment Index? ▼
Bridges Virtual Academy has the highest Resource Investment Index among the Merrill schools in this federal-data comparison at 53/100. The index summarizes reported staffing, counseling, gifted-program, and attendance inputs; it is not an academic rating.
How many schools are in Merrill, WI? ▼
Merrill has 7 public schools with a total enrollment of 2,686 students. 2 are charter schools. Average student-teacher ratio: 16.7:1.
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.
