Dayton Elementary

Dayton Elementary is an elementary school of well-populated scale in DAYTON, Minnesota, one of the schools within Anoka-Hennepin School District, works with 556 students in grades K through 5. Compared to the state average of about 344 students per school, that is 62% above typical.

Anoka-Hennepin School District comprises 53 schools with combined enrollment of 38,746 students; Dayton Elementary is among them.

On demographics, Dayton Elementary logs that White students make up the majority at 56%. The remainder breaks down as 15% Black, 12% Hispanic, 8% Asian, 7% multiracial. By comparison, Hennepin County as a whole is about 66% White, so the school skews visibly less White than its surroundings.

On the resource side, On paper, Dayton Elementary has 42 full-time-equivalent teachers, translating to a class-load average of around 13.1:1. That tracks the state average closely. Around 29% of the student body qualifies for free or reduced-price meals, a number frequently used as a low-income enrollment indicator. That share is noticeably below Hennepin County's rate of about 43%.

On a residual basis (actual vs predicted given the student mix), Dayton Elementary performs roughly as the BeatsExpectations model predicts for a school with this FRL share. The predicted value is around 49.5%, the actual is 51.0%, a residual of +1.5 points.

Zooming out to the county, ACS estimates for Hennepin County put the typical household earns roughly $97,653 per year, roughly 54% of adults have completed at least a four-year degree, and census figures put the poverty rate at about 5%. Across Hennepin County's 496 public schools (combined enrollment of about 177,509 students), Dayton Elementary is one campus in the mix.

The closest other public school is Anoka-Hennepin Tech High School, roughly 1.4 miles away. 8 of the 8 nearest public schools sit inside a five-mile radius.

The campus sits in a commuter-belt setting.

Looking at the recent track record. Over the past 7-year window, the student count ticked up 18%: 471 students in 2018 compared to 556 in 2025. Over the same period, the White share contracted from 73% to 56%. Class-load math has tightened: from 16.4:1 in 2018 to 13.1:1 in 2025.

Within the allk12 community for this school, posts here usually surface around sports schedules, lunch menu changes, and school spirit week. Anyone with firsthand experience at this school can post or comment.