Bessemer City High School

Bessemer City High School is one of the mid-tier high schools in Bessemer, Alabama, run under Bessemer City, with 760 students on its rolls from grades 9 through 12.

Bessemer City comprises 7 schools with combined enrollment of 3,012 students; Bessemer City High School is among them.

For racial and ethnic makeup, Bessemer City High School shows that Black students make up the majority at 77%. The remainder consists of 22% Hispanic. That is noticeably more Black than the county at large, where the share is closer to 42%.

Looking at school resources, The school employs 35 full-time-equivalent teachers, for a student-teacher ratio near 21.7:1. That figure is higher than the state norm's 17.2:1 average. An estimated 80% of students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, which schools and policymakers use as a rough income-mix signal. By comparison, Jefferson County runs at roughly 52%, so the school's eligibility rate is above the surrounding baseline.

With demographic context factored in, Bessemer City High School falls in the UNDERPERFORMING tier of the BeatsExpectations residual. Given its student profile, a typical campus would land near 26.1%; this one comes in at 3.5%, -22.6 points off the demographic line.

In the broader community, census data for Jefferson County shows median household income runs about $66,388, 36% of adults hold a bachelor's degree or higher, and the poverty rate sits near 11%. In all, Jefferson County runs 181 public schools (combined enrollment of about 97,401 students), of which Bessemer City High School is one.

Nearest neighbor: Empower Community School Upper Campus, around 0.7 miles off. 8 of the 8 nearest public schools sit inside a five-mile radius. Ranking that nearby cluster on reported proficiency puts Bessemer City High School at 8th of 8; the average score across the group is 40.8%.

Geographically, the school is in a suburban area.

Looking at the recent track record. Looking back 7 years, enrollment at Bessemer City High School has declined 20%, going from 949 students in 2018 to 760 in 2025. The Hispanic share of enrollment ticked up from 7% to 22% over that span.

On the community side, recent activity here tends to focus on open house dates, ride-share offers, and field-trip permission slips. Anyone with firsthand experience at this school can post or comment.