Hills Elementary School

Hills Elementary School, a low-enrollment elementary school in Hills, Iowa, run under Iowa City Comm School District, caters to 151 students, covering grades pre-K through 6. Enrollment runs roughly 54% below the state mean of about 325.

Iowa City Comm School District comprises 29 schools with combined enrollment of 15,111 students; Hills Elementary School is among them.

For racial and ethnic makeup, Hills Elementary School logs that the most-represented group is Hispanic (50%), with the rest of the student body spread across multiple groups; the rest reads as 35% White, 9% Black, 5% multiracial. The wider county runs roughly 7% Hispanic, putting the school's mix visibly more Hispanic than the area baseline.

Looking at school resources, On paper, Hills Elementary School has 13 full-time-equivalent teachers, translating to a class-load average of around 8.6:1. Statewide, the average ratio sits near 13.7:1, putting Hills Elementary School tighter than the state norm the norm. Around 79% of the student body qualifies for free or reduced-price meals, often used as a Title I proxy. By comparison, Johnson County runs at roughly 37%, so the school's eligibility rate is somewhat above the surrounding baseline.

On a residual basis (actual vs predicted given the student mix), Hills Elementary School falls in the UNDERPERFORMING tier of the BeatsExpectations residual. Given its student profile, a typical campus would land near 52.5%; this one comes in at 41.8%, -10.8 points off the demographic line.

In the surrounding community, the surrounding county (Johnson County) logs that median household income runs about $74,935, roughly 55% of adults have completed at least a four-year degree, and census figures put the poverty rate at about 7%. Hills Elementary School is one of 43 public schools in Johnson County (combined enrollment of about 20,019 students).

Nearest neighbor: Highland Elementary School, around 4.9 miles off. Counting just inside five miles, 2 other public schools cluster around Hills Elementary School. Among the 8 schools in that immediate cluster with test data (this one included), Hills Elementary School ranks 8th on composite proficiency, beneath the local average of 58.0%.

The school occupies a low-density site.

Trend over the last 6 years. Over the past 6-year window, the student count shrank 32%: 223 students in 2018 compared to 151 in 2024. Over the same period, the Hispanic share increased from 38% to 50%. Class-load math has loosened: from 8.8:1 in 2018 to 11.7:1 in 2024.

On this page, members of the Hills Elementary School community share and discuss open house dates, ride-share offers, and field-trip permission slips. Anyone with firsthand experience at this school can post or comment.