North Ridge Elementary

North Ridge Elementary operates as a middle-of-the-pack elementary school in Grimes, Iowa, operated by Dallas Center-Grimes Comm School District. Current enrollment sits at 412 students spanning grades K through 4. Enrollment runs roughly 27% larger than the state mean of about 325.

Dallas Center-Grimes Comm School District comprises 7 schools with combined enrollment of 3,743 students; North Ridge Elementary is among them.

For racial and ethnic makeup, North Ridge Elementary records that 90% of students identify as White, making the school strongly White-majority; the rest looks like 4% Hispanic, 3% multiracial. The wider county runs roughly 76% White, putting the school's mix noticeably more White than the area baseline.

On the income-and-resources front, On paper, North Ridge Elementary has 28 full-time-equivalent teachers, translating to a class-load average of around 14.6:1. That figure is higher than the state norm's 13.7:1 average. Roughly 13% of students at North Ridge Elementary qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, a commonly cited indicator of low-income enrollment. By comparison, Polk County runs at roughly 49%, so the school's eligibility rate is meaningfully below the surrounding baseline.

Around the school, the surrounding county (Polk County) shows that the typical household earns roughly $83,576 per year, roughly 40% of adults have completed at least a four-year degree, and the poverty rate sits near 7%. North Ridge Elementary is one of 137 public schools in Polk County (combined enrollment of about 77,436 students).

Nearest neighbor: Heritage Elementary, around 0.7 miles off. 8 of the 8 nearest public schools sit inside a five-mile radius.

Geographically, the school is in a suburban area.

Trend over the last 7 years. Over the past 7-year window, the student count declined 15%: 483 students in 2018 compared to 412 in 2025. Over the same period, the White share shrank from 95% to 90%. Class-load math has pulled in: from 15.9:1 in 2018 to 14.6:1 in 2025.

On this page, posts here usually surface around open house dates, ride-share offers, and field-trip permission slips. Contributors range from current parents to recent graduates and teachers.