Northwood-Kensett Elementary

Located at 1200 1st Ave North, in Northwood, Iowa, Northwood-Kensett Elementary is a mid-sized primary school that instructs 287 students (grades pre-K through 5), run under Northwood-Kensett Comm School District.

Northwood-Kensett Comm School District comprises 2 schools with combined enrollment of 552 students; Northwood-Kensett Elementary is among them.

On the student-mix side, Northwood-Kensett Elementary records that the student body is overwhelmingly White (91%). Beyond that, the school lists 6% Hispanic, 2% multiracial. That composition is broadly in line with Worth County as a whole.

In terms of school funding signals, On paper, Northwood-Kensett Elementary has 19 full-time-equivalent teachers, translating to a class-load average of around 15.1:1. Statewide, the average ratio sits near 13.7:1, putting Northwood-Kensett Elementary higher than the state norm the norm. An estimated 30% of students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, a number frequently used as a low-income enrollment indicator.

On a residual basis (actual vs predicted given the student mix), Northwood-Kensett Elementary performs roughly as the BeatsExpectations model predicts for a school with this FRL share. The predicted value is around 77.0%, the actual is 68.3%, a residual of -8.7 points.

In the broader community, community-level numbers for Worth County indicate the typical household earns roughly $78,008 per year, 19% of adults hold a bachelor's degree or higher, and census figures put the poverty rate at about 5%. In all, Worth County runs 4 public schools (combined enrollment of about 931 students), of which Northwood-Kensett Elementary is one.

Nearest neighbor: Northwood-Kensett Middle/High School, around 0.6 miles off. 5 of the 8 nearest public schools sit inside a ten-mile radius, suggesting a relatively low-density school footprint. Among the 7 schools in that immediate cluster with test data (this one included), Northwood-Kensett Elementary ranks 4th on composite proficiency, above the local average of 54.8%.

The campus sits in a small-town setting.

Five-year trend. Looking back 7 years, enrollment at Northwood-Kensett Elementary has shrank 17%, going from 347 students in 2018 to 287 in 2025.

On the community side, recent activity here tends to focus on sports schedules, lunch menu changes, and school spirit week. Anyone with firsthand experience at this school can post or comment.