Western Hills Elementary School

As a heavily attended elementary campus in West Des Moines, Iowa, Western Hills Elementary School works with 570 students from grades pre-K through 6, part of West Des Moines Comm School District. That puts it 75% bigger than the typical public school in Iowa, which averages around 325 students.

Within West Des Moines Comm School District, which oversees 13 schools and 9,009 students, Western Hills Elementary School is one campus in the system.

Demographically, Western Hills Elementary School records that the largest single group is White at 49%, but no single group is in the majority. The remainder breaks down as 28% Hispanic, 11% Black, 7% multiracial, 5% Asian. By comparison, Polk County as a whole is about 76% White, so the school skews visibly less White than its surroundings.

On the income-and-resources front, On paper, Western Hills Elementary School has 38 full-time-equivalent teachers, translating to a class-load average of around 14.9:1. Statewide, the average ratio sits near 13.7:1, putting Western Hills Elementary School higher than the state norm the norm. Roughly 46% of students at Western Hills Elementary School qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, often used as a Title I proxy.

On a demographically-adjusted basis, Western Hills Elementary School sits in the middle band of the BeatsExpectations distribution. Schools with this campus's student mix typically land near 69.0%; this one delivers 67.4%.

Around the school, the surrounding county (Polk County) records that median household income runs about $83,576, roughly 40% of adults have completed at least a four-year degree, and census figures put the poverty rate at about 7%. In all, Polk County runs 137 public schools (combined enrollment of about 77,436 students), of which Western Hills Elementary School is one.

Valley High School is the nearest neighboring public school, about 0.7 miles from this campus. 8 of the 8 nearest public schools sit inside a five-mile radius. On composite proficiency, Western Hills Elementary School comes 8th of 9 in the immediate cluster, behind the nearby-schools average of 75.8%.

The school occupies an urban site.

Over the past 7-year window. Over the past 7-year window, the student count changed only slightly: 570 students in 2018 compared to 570 in 2025. Over the same period, the White share shrank from 68% to 49%.

On this page, posts here usually surface around open house dates, ride-share offers, and field-trip permission slips. Anyone with firsthand experience at this school can post or comment.