HILLCREST ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

HILLCREST ELEMENTARY SCHOOL operates as a medium-sized elementary-level community in LAKE WALES, Florida, overseen by POLK. Current enrollment sits at 667 students spanning grades pre-K through 5.

HILLCREST ELEMENTARY SCHOOL is one of 163 schools operated by POLK, a district that enrolls 116,552 students overall.

Looking at the student body, HILLCREST ELEMENTARY SCHOOL lists that the largest single group is White at 45%, but no single group is in the majority; the rest reads as 29% Hispanic, 20% Black, 6% multiracial. By comparison, Polk County as a whole is about 56% White, so the school skews noticeably less White than its surroundings.

In terms of school funding signals, Staff filings list 41 full-time-equivalent teachers, which works out to roughly 16.3:1 students per teacher. That figure is tighter than the state norm's 17.5:1 average. An estimated 69% of students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, often used as a Title I proxy.

With demographic context factored in, HILLCREST ELEMENTARY SCHOOL performs roughly as the BeatsExpectations model predicts for a school with this FRL share. The predicted value is around 46.5%, the actual is 60.0%, a residual of +13.5 points.

Around the school, ACS estimates for Polk County put the typical household earns roughly $65,978 per year, 24% of adults hold a bachelor's degree or higher, and the poverty rate sits near 11%. HILLCREST ELEMENTARY SCHOOL is one of 172 public schools in Polk County (combined enrollment of about 117,004 students).

MCLAUGHLIN ACADEMY OF EXCELLENCE is the nearest neighboring public school, about 1.2 miles from this campus. Counting just inside five miles, 8 other public schools cluster around HILLCREST ELEMENTARY SCHOOL. On composite proficiency, HILLCREST ELEMENTARY SCHOOL comes 1st of 7 in the immediate cluster, ahead of the nearby-schools average of 42.7%.

Geographically, the school is in a suburban area. HILLCREST ELEMENTARY SCHOOL is a charter school, which puts it inside the public-school system but outside the standard district-managed model.

Over the past 7-year window. Looking back 7 years, enrollment at HILLCREST ELEMENTARY SCHOOL has stayed largely flat, going from 676 students in 2018 to 667 in 2025. White enrollment moved from 51% to 45% across the same window. The student-to-teacher ratio rose from 12.8:1 in 2018 to 16.3:1 today.

Inside the community feed, members of the HILLCREST ELEMENTARY SCHOOL community share and discuss science fair prep, picture-day reminders, and bus-route questions. Anyone with firsthand experience at this school can post or comment.