St Marys Elem

St Marys Elem operates as a moderately sized primary school in St Marys, Kansas, run under Kaw Valley. Current enrollment sits at 280 students spanning grades pre-K through 6.

Across the 4 schools in Kaw Valley (1,100 students total), St Marys Elem accounts for its share of the district's footprint.

For racial and ethnic makeup, St Marys Elem reports that 80% of students identify as White, making the school strongly White-majority; the rest looks like 13% Hispanic, 4% multiracial. The wider county runs roughly 89% White, putting the school's mix noticeably less White than the area baseline.

In terms of school funding signals, On paper, St Marys Elem has 24 full-time-equivalent teachers, translating to a class-load average of around 11.5:1. That figure is tighter than the state norm's 13.2:1 average. Roughly 48% of students at St Marys Elem qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, a commonly cited indicator of low-income enrollment. Set against Pottawatomie County (around 31%), the school's rate is meaningfully above typical.

Adjusting for the school's free-and-reduced-lunch share, St Marys Elem performs roughly as the BeatsExpectations model predicts for a school with this FRL share. The predicted value is around 39.1%, the actual is 53.3%, a residual of +14.2 points.

Around the school, community-level numbers for Pottawatomie County indicate the typical household earns roughly $92,325 per year, roughly 38% of adults have completed at least a four-year degree, and the poverty rate sits near 4%. In all, Pottawatomie County runs 16 public schools (combined enrollment of about 4,283 students), of which St Marys Elem is one.

St. Marys Junior Senior High is the nearest neighboring public school, about 0.2 miles from this campus. 4 of the 8 nearest public schools sit inside a ten-mile radius, suggesting a relatively low-density school footprint. Among the 8 schools in that immediate cluster with test data (this one included), St Marys Elem ranks 2nd on composite proficiency, ahead of the local average of 42.9%.

Geographically, the school is in a countryside area.

Looking at the recent track record. Over the past 7-year window, the student count ticked down 23%: 363 students in 2018 compared to 280 in 2025. Class-load math has pulled in: from 13.6:1 in 2018 to 11.5:1 in 2025.

On this page, members of the St Marys Elem community share and discuss open house dates, ride-share offers, and field-trip permission slips. Contributors range from current parents to recent graduates and teachers.