Horace May Elementary

Horace May Elementary is a K-5 school of average-sized scale in BEMIDJI, Minnesota, run under Bemidji Public School District, serveing 300 students in grades pre-K through 3.

Bemidji Public School District runs 14 schools in total, collectively educating 4,722 students. Horace May Elementary is one of those campuses.

For racial and ethnic makeup, Horace May Elementary reports that 76% of the student body identifies as White; the rest comes out to 16% Native American, 7% multiracial.

In terms of school funding signals, Staff filings list 25 full-time-equivalent teachers, which works out to roughly 11.8:1 students per teacher. The state averages around 13.7:1, so this campus is tighter than the state norm typical. About 41% of enrolled students meet the income threshold for free or reduced-price lunch, a number frequently used as a low-income enrollment indicator. That share is noticeably below Beltrami County's rate of about 54%.

Adjusting for the school's free-and-reduced-lunch share, Horace May Elementary performs roughly as the BeatsExpectations model predicts for a school with this FRL share. The predicted value is around 42.9%, the actual is 46.3%, a residual of +3.5 points.

In the area at large, community-level numbers for Beltrami County indicate median household earnings sit near $68,975, 32% of adults hold a bachelor's degree or higher, and roughly 10% of residents live below the federal poverty line. In all, Beltrami County runs 38 public schools (combined enrollment of about 8,088 students), of which Horace May Elementary is one.

The closest other public school is Lincoln Elementary, roughly 3.4 miles away. Counting just inside five miles, 8 other public schools cluster around Horace May Elementary. Among the 4 schools in that immediate cluster with test data (this one included), Horace May Elementary ranks 2nd on composite proficiency, ahead of the local average of 39.0%.

The campus sits in a low-density setting.

Over the past 7-year window. Looking back 7 years, enrollment at Horace May Elementary has edged down 36%, going from 468 students in 2018 to 300 in 2025. White enrollment moved from 85% to 76% across the same window. The student-to-teacher ratio tightened from 16.3:1 in 2018 to 11.8:1 today.

On allk12, recent activity here tends to focus on open house dates, ride-share offers, and field-trip permission slips. Contributors range from current parents to recent graduates and teachers.