Sunflower Elementary

Set in Gardner, Kansas, Sunflower Elementary is a middle-of-the-pack primary school, one of the schools within Gardner Edgerton. It works with 293 students across grades pre-K through 4.

Across the 11 schools in Gardner Edgerton (5,854 students total), Sunflower Elementary accounts for its share of the district's footprint.

On the student-mix side, Sunflower Elementary lists that the largest single group is White, at 74% of enrollment. The remainder comes out to 11% Hispanic, 8% multiracial, 6% Black.

On the resource side, The school employs 25 full-time-equivalent teachers, for a student-teacher ratio near 11.6:1. Statewide, the average ratio sits near 13.2:1, putting Sunflower Elementary tighter than the state norm the norm. Roughly 30% of students at Sunflower Elementary qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, which schools and policymakers use as a rough income-mix signal.

Adjusting for the school's free-and-reduced-lunch share, Sunflower Elementary performs roughly as the BeatsExpectations model predicts for a school with this FRL share. The predicted value is around 47.8%, the actual is 47.0%, a residual of -0.8 points.

Across the wider county, the surrounding county (Johnson County) reports that the typical household earns roughly $109,208 per year, about 58% of the adult population holds a bachelor's degree or above, and census figures put the poverty rate at about 3%. Sunflower Elementary is one of 168 public schools in Johnson County (combined enrollment of about 93,598 students).

Nearest neighbor: Wheatridge Middle School, around 0.7 miles off. Within five miles, there are 8 other public schools. Ranking that nearby cluster on reported proficiency puts Sunflower Elementary at 2nd of 9; the average score across the group is 40.0%.

Geographically, the school is in a bedroom-community area.

Five-year trend. Sunflower Elementary's enrollment has shrank 24% since 2018, when it stood at 385 (now 293). Over the same period, the White share fell from 84% to 74%. The student-to-teacher ratio fell from 14.5:1 in 2018 to 11.6:1 today.

On this page, posts here usually surface around open house dates, ride-share offers, and field-trip permission slips. Posting is open to anyone connected to the school.