Pelham High School

Set in Pelham, Alabama, Pelham High School is a heavily attended secondary school, operated by Pelham City. It serves 1,076 students across grades 9 through 12. By comparison, Alabama's public schools average about 682 students each, so Pelham High School sits 58% above that benchmark.

Across the 4 schools in Pelham City (3,444 students total), Pelham High School accounts for its share of the district's footprint.

On demographics, Pelham High School reports that the most-represented group is White (44%), with the rest of the student body spread across multiple groups. Beyond that, the school lists 30% Hispanic, 20% Black, 4% multiracial, 3% Asian. That is considerably less White than the county at large, where the share is closer to 76%.

On the income-and-resources front, On paper, Pelham High School has 73 full-time-equivalent teachers, translating to a class-load average of around 14.8:1. That figure is tighter than the state norm's 17.2:1 average. About 43% of enrolled students meet the income threshold for free or reduced-price lunch, a commonly cited indicator of low-income enrollment.

Adjusting for the school's free-and-reduced-lunch share, Pelham High School is in the bottom 10% of Alabama public schools. The BeatsExpectations model predicts schools with this FRL share to land around 52.5%; Pelham High School posts 35.4%, -17.1 points below that line.

Zooming out to the county, Shelby County reports that the typical household earns roughly $97,961 per year, roughly 47% of adults have completed at least a four-year degree, and the poverty rate sits near 5%. In all, Shelby County runs 48 public schools (combined enrollment of about 35,120 students), of which Pelham High School is one.

Nearest neighbor: Pelham Park Middle School, around 0.9 miles off. 8 of the 8 nearest public schools sit inside a five-mile radius. On composite proficiency, Pelham High School comes 5th of 7 in the immediate cluster, below the nearby-schools average of 36.2%.

Geographically, the school is in a bedroom-community area.

Over the past 7-year window. Over the past 7-year window, the student count rose 14%: 945 students in 2018 compared to 1,076 in 2025. The White share of enrollment fell from 54% to 44% over that span.

On this page, posts here usually surface around classroom updates, athletics, and weather closures. Members of the school community can share what they know.