Central Lee Elementary School

Set in Donnellson, Iowa, Central Lee Elementary School is a sprawling primary school, operated by Central Lee Comm School District. It educates 564 students across grades pre-K through 4. That puts it 74% bigger than the typical public school in Iowa, which averages around 325 students.

Across the 3 schools in Central Lee Comm School District (1,311 students total), Central Lee Elementary School accounts for its share of the district's footprint.

Looking at the student body, Central Lee Elementary School reports that the student body is overwhelmingly White (95%); the rest breaks down as 2% Black, 2% Hispanic. That composition is broadly in line with Lee County as a whole.

In terms of school funding signals, Staff filings list 31 full-time-equivalent teachers, which works out to roughly 18.3:1 students per teacher. The state averages around 13.7:1, so this campus is higher than the state norm typical. Roughly 30% of students at Central Lee Elementary School qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, often used as a Title I proxy. Set against Lee County (around 53%), the school's rate is south of typical.

After controlling for student poverty, Central Lee Elementary School performs roughly as the BeatsExpectations model predicts for a school with this FRL share. The predicted value is around 77.0%, the actual is 72.2%, a residual of -4.9 points.

Around the school, Lee County reports that the typical household earns roughly $62,382 per year, roughly 22% of adults have completed at least a four-year degree, and roughly 9% of residents live below the federal poverty line. In all, Lee County runs 13 public schools (combined enrollment of about 6,014 students), of which Central Lee Elementary School is one.

Central Lee Middle School is the nearest neighboring public school, about 0.0 miles from this campus. Counting just inside five miles, 2 other public schools cluster around Central Lee Elementary School. On composite proficiency, Central Lee Elementary School comes 5th of 8 in the immediate cluster, higher than the nearby-schools average of 67.3%.

Geographically, the school is in an outlying area.

Five-year trend. Over the past 7-year window, the student count ticked down 3%: 580 students in 2018 compared to 564 in 2025.

Within the allk12 community for this school, the feed for Central Lee Elementary School typically covers enrollment questions, classroom assignments, and PTA news. Members of the school community can share what they know.