Carver Elementary

Carver Elementary is a primary school of reasonably sized scale in Des Moines, Iowa, overseen by Des Moines Independent Comm School District, works with 436 students in grades pre-K through 5. Compared to the state average of about 325 students per school, that is 34% larger than typical.

Des Moines Independent Comm School District comprises 59 schools with combined enrollment of 29,676 students; Carver Elementary is among them.

For racial and ethnic makeup, Carver Elementary lists that Hispanic students make up the majority at 60%. Other groups include 22% Black, 7% White, 6% multiracial, 4% Asian. By comparison, Polk County as a whole is about 10% Hispanic, so the school skews meaningfully more Hispanic than its surroundings.

On the resource side, Carver Elementary logs 31 full-time-equivalent teachers, putting the student-to-teacher ratio at about 14.2:1. That tracks the state average closely. About 92% of enrolled students meet the income threshold for free or reduced-price lunch, which schools and policymakers use as a rough income-mix signal. That share is noticeably above Polk County's rate of about 49%.

Adjusting for the school's free-and-reduced-lunch share, Carver Elementary sits in the middle band of the BeatsExpectations distribution. Schools with this campus's student mix typically land near 45.7%; this one delivers 40.2%.

In the surrounding community, the surrounding county (Polk County) reports that median household income runs about $83,576, about 40% of the adult population holds a bachelor's degree or above, and roughly 7% of residents live below the federal poverty line. In all, Polk County runs 137 public schools (combined enrollment of about 77,436 students), of which Carver Elementary is one.

Nearest neighbor: East High School, around 0.6 miles off. Within five miles, there are 8 other public schools. On composite proficiency, Carver Elementary comes 4th of 8 in the immediate cluster, beneath the nearby-schools average of 41.3%.

The school occupies a metropolitan site.

Looking at the recent track record. Carver Elementary's enrollment has shrank 21% since 2018, when it stood at 549 (now 436). Over the same period, the Hispanic share expanded from 50% to 60%. The student-to-teacher ratio widened from 12.2:1 in 2018 to 14.2:1 today.

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