J.W. Smith Elementary

J.W. Smith Elementary operates as a compact primary school in BEMIDJI, Minnesota, overseen by Bemidji Public School District. Current enrollment sits at 238 students spanning grades pre-K through 3. By comparison, Minnesota's public schools average about 344 students each, so J.W. Smith Elementary sits 31% below that benchmark.

Across the 14 schools in Bemidji Public School District (4,722 students total), J.W. Smith Elementary accounts for its share of the district's footprint.

In terms of who attends, J.W. Smith Elementary records that 63% of the student body identifies as Native American. The remainder comes out to 23% White, 7% multiracial, 3% Hispanic, 2% Black.

On the resource side, The school lists 20 full-time-equivalent teachers, for a student-teacher ratio near 11.6:1. That figure is tighter than the state norm's 13.7:1 average. An estimated 82% of students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, which schools and policymakers use as a rough income-mix signal. By comparison, Beltrami County runs at roughly 54%, so the school's eligibility rate is above the surrounding baseline.

After controlling for student poverty, J.W. Smith Elementary performs roughly as the BeatsExpectations model predicts for a school with this FRL share. The predicted value is around 20.8%, the actual is 17.3%, a residual of -3.5 points.

In the surrounding community, the surrounding county (Beltrami County) shows that median household earnings sit near $68,975, 32% of adults hold a bachelor's degree or higher, and the poverty rate sits near 10%. In all, Beltrami County runs 38 public schools (combined enrollment of about 8,088 students), of which J.W. Smith Elementary is one.

Lakeside Learning Center is the nearest neighboring public school, about 0.9 miles from this campus. Within five miles, there are 8 other public schools. Among the 5 schools in that immediate cluster with test data (this one included), J.W. Smith Elementary ranks 5th on composite proficiency, behind the local average of 30.9%.

J.W. Smith Elementary operates from a town-center location.

Over the past 7-year window. Looking back 7 years, enrollment at J.W. Smith Elementary has fell 43%, going from 417 students in 2018 to 238 in 2025. White enrollment moved from 36% to 23% across the same window. Class-load math has narrowed: from 15.9:1 in 2018 to 11.6:1 in 2025.

On this page, members of the J.W. Smith Elementary community share and discuss science fair prep, picture-day reminders, and bus-route questions. Anyone with firsthand experience at this school can post or comment.