Timber Ridge Elementary

Timber Ridge Elementary is one of the roomy primary schools in Johnston, Iowa, run under Johnston Comm School District, with 667 students on its rolls from grades K through 5. Enrollment runs roughly 105% bigger than the state mean of about 325.

Johnston Comm School District comprises 8 schools with combined enrollment of 7,339 students; Timber Ridge Elementary is among them.

Looking at the student body, Timber Ridge Elementary records that White students make up the majority at 60%. The remainder reads as 14% Asian, 10% Black, 9% Hispanic, 6% multiracial. By comparison, Polk County as a whole is about 76% White, so the school skews considerably less White than its surroundings.

Looking at the economic backdrop, Staff filings list 47 full-time-equivalent teachers, which works out to roughly 14.1:1 students per teacher. That tracks the state average closely. Roughly 27% of students at Timber Ridge Elementary qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, which schools and policymakers use as a rough income-mix signal. By comparison, Polk County runs at roughly 49%, so the school's eligibility rate is below the surrounding baseline.

On a demographically-adjusted basis, Timber Ridge Elementary performs roughly as the BeatsExpectations model predicts for a school with this FRL share. The predicted value is around 78.3%, the actual is 73.9%, a residual of -4.4 points.

In the broader community, community-level numbers for Polk County indicate the typical household earns roughly $83,576 per year, 40% of adults hold a bachelor's degree or higher, and the poverty rate sits near 7%. Across Polk County's 137 public schools (combined enrollment of about 77,436 students), Timber Ridge Elementary is one campus in the mix.

The closest other public school is Urbandale Middle School, roughly 1.3 miles away. 8 of the 8 nearest public schools sit inside a five-mile radius. On composite proficiency, Timber Ridge Elementary comes 6th of 9 in the immediate cluster, below the nearby-schools average of 76.9%.

Geographically, the school is in a commuter-belt area.

Trend over the last 7 years. Looking back 7 years, enrollment at Timber Ridge Elementary has fell 12%, going from 754 students in 2018 to 667 in 2025. The White share of enrollment decreased from 75% to 60% over that span. Class-load math has pulled in: from 17.1:1 in 2018 to 14.1:1 in 2025.

Inside the community feed, posts here usually surface around enrollment questions, classroom assignments, and PTA news. The community welcomes input from current and former families.