Jefferson Elem

Set in Wichita, Kansas, Jefferson Elem is a medium-sized elementary campus, run under Wichita. It works with 381 students across grades pre-K through 5. By comparison, Kansas's public schools average about 313 students each, so Jefferson Elem sits 22% above that benchmark.

Across the 87 schools in Wichita (47,545 students total), Jefferson Elem accounts for its share of the district's footprint.

On the student-mix side, Jefferson Elem records that the most-represented group is Hispanic (45%), with the rest of the student body spread across multiple groups. Other groups include 22% Black, 20% White, 7% Asian, 3% Pacific Islander. That is noticeably more Hispanic than the county at large, where the share is closer to 17%.

On the resource side, Jefferson Elem records 27 full-time-equivalent teachers, putting the student-to-teacher ratio at about 13.9:1. That figure is higher than the state norm's 13.2:1 average. Roughly 92% of students at Jefferson Elem qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, a commonly cited indicator of low-income enrollment. By comparison, Sedgwick County runs at roughly 63%, so the school's eligibility rate is meaningfully above the surrounding baseline.

Adjusting for the school's free-and-reduced-lunch share, Jefferson Elem performs roughly as the BeatsExpectations model predicts for a school with this FRL share. The predicted value is around 18.2%, the actual is 17.5%, a residual of -0.7 points.

In the broader community, community-level numbers for Sedgwick County indicate the typical household earns roughly $69,365 per year, about 32% of the adult population holds a bachelor's degree or above, and the poverty rate sits near 10%. In all, Sedgwick County runs 160 public schools (combined enrollment of about 84,569 students), of which Jefferson Elem is one.

Nearest neighbor: Curtis Middle School, around 0.8 miles off. Counting just inside five miles, 8 other public schools cluster around Jefferson Elem. Among the 8 schools in that immediate cluster with test data (this one included), Jefferson Elem ranks 6th on composite proficiency, behind the local average of 29.2%.

Jefferson Elem operates from a city-core location.

Over the past 7-year window. Over the past 7-year window, the student count ticked down 19%: 470 students in 2018 compared to 381 in 2025. The student-to-teacher ratio tightened from 17.0:1 in 2018 to 13.9:1 today.

In the discussion threads here, posts here usually surface around fundraisers, lost-and-found posts, and report-card season. Anyone with firsthand experience at this school can post or comment.