Highland Elementary School

Highland Elementary School is one of the cozy elementary schools in Riverside, Iowa, run under Highland Comm School District, with 242 students on its rolls from grades pre-K through 5. That puts it 26% smaller than the typical public school in Iowa, which averages around 325 students.

Highland Comm School District comprises 3 schools with combined enrollment of 510 students; Highland Elementary School is among them.

In terms of who attends, Highland Elementary School lists that 92% of students identify as White, making the school strongly White-majority. Other groups include 6% Hispanic. That composition is broadly in line with Washington County as a whole.

On the income-and-resources front, Highland Elementary School lists 21 full-time-equivalent teachers, putting the student-to-teacher ratio at about 11.7:1. Statewide, the average ratio sits near 13.7:1, putting Highland Elementary School tighter than the state norm the norm. An estimated 25% of students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, which schools and policymakers use as a rough income-mix signal.

On a residual basis (actual vs predicted given the student mix), Highland Elementary School is in the bottom 10% of Iowa public schools. The BeatsExpectations model predicts schools with this FRL share to land around 79.3%; Highland Elementary School posts 57.0%, -22.4 points below that line.

In the broader community, ACS estimates for Washington County put the typical household earns roughly $75,647 per year, roughly 26% of adults have completed at least a four-year degree, and census figures put the poverty rate at about 6%. Across Washington County's 13 public schools (combined enrollment of about 3,820 students), Highland Elementary School is one campus in the mix.

Nearest neighbor: Hills Elementary School, around 4.9 miles off. 8 of the 8 nearest public schools sit inside a ten-mile radius, suggesting a relatively low-density school footprint. On composite proficiency, Highland Elementary School comes 6th of 8 in the immediate cluster, below the nearby-schools average of 66.1%.

The school occupies a countryside site.

Five-year trend. Over the past 7-year window, the student count contracted 19%: 300 students in 2018 compared to 242 in 2025. Class-load math has fell: from 14.7:1 in 2018 to 11.7:1 in 2025.

Inside the community feed, recent activity here tends to focus on open house dates, ride-share offers, and field-trip permission slips. Posting is open to anyone connected to the school.