Greenwood Elementary School

Greenwood Elementary School operates as a reasonably sized K-5 school in Des Moines, Iowa, one of the schools within Des Moines Independent Comm School District. Current enrollment sits at 293 students spanning grades pre-K through 5.

Des Moines Independent Comm School District runs 59 schools in total, collectively educating 29,676 students. Greenwood Elementary School is one of those campuses.

Looking at the student body, Greenwood Elementary School reports that the largest single group is White, at 56% of enrollment. The remainder comes out to 17% Black, 13% Hispanic, 12% multiracial. By comparison, Polk County as a whole is about 76% White, so the school skews noticeably less White than its surroundings.

In terms of school funding signals, Staff filings list 20 full-time-equivalent teachers, which works out to roughly 14.6:1 students per teacher. Statewide, the average ratio sits near 13.7:1, putting Greenwood Elementary School higher than the state norm the norm. An estimated 46% of students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, often used as a Title I proxy.

After controlling for student poverty, Greenwood Elementary School performs roughly as the BeatsExpectations model predicts for a school with this FRL share. The predicted value is around 68.7%, the actual is 66.7%, a residual of -2.0 points.

In the broader community, the surrounding county (Polk County) logs that median household income runs about $83,576, roughly 40% of adults have completed at least a four-year degree, and roughly 7% of residents live below the federal poverty line. Greenwood Elementary School is one of 137 public schools in Polk County (combined enrollment of about 77,436 students).

Nearest neighbor: Callanan Middle School, around 0.8 miles off. Within five miles, there are 8 other public schools. On composite proficiency, Greenwood Elementary School comes 4th of 7 in the immediate cluster, above the nearby-schools average of 65.5%.

The school occupies an inner-city site.

Five-year trend. Over the past 7-year window, the student count increased 4%: 283 students in 2018 compared to 293 in 2025.

Within the allk12 community for this school, posts here usually surface around sports schedules, lunch menu changes, and school spirit week. Posting is open to anyone connected to the school.