RIVERSIDE ELEMENTARY

RIVERSIDE ELEMENTARY is a reasonably sized K-5 school in BRAINERD, Minnesota, run under BRAINERD PUBLIC SCHOOL DISTRICT. The school instructs 407 students in grades pre-K through 4.

RIVERSIDE ELEMENTARY is one of 13 schools operated by BRAINERD PUBLIC SCHOOL DISTRICT, a district that teaches 6,079 students overall.

For racial and ethnic makeup, RIVERSIDE ELEMENTARY shows that 85% of students identify as White, making the school strongly White-majority. The remainder consists of 8% multiracial, 4% Hispanic, 2% Native American. The wider county runs roughly 94% White, putting the school's mix meaningfully less White than the area baseline.

On the income-and-resources front, The school reports having 40 full-time-equivalent teachers, for a student-teacher ratio near 10.2:1. That figure is tighter than the state norm's 13.7:1 average. About 57% of enrolled students meet the income threshold for free or reduced-price lunch, a commonly cited indicator of low-income enrollment. That share is north of Crow Wing County's rate of about 40%.

Adjusting for the school's free-and-reduced-lunch share, RIVERSIDE ELEMENTARY performs roughly as the BeatsExpectations model predicts for a school with this FRL share. The predicted value is around 34.2%, the actual is 44.9%, a residual of +10.8 points.

Zooming out to the county, the surrounding county (Crow Wing County) shows that the typical household earns roughly $72,589 per year, roughly 29% of adults have completed at least a four-year degree, and roughly 6% of residents live below the federal poverty line. In all, Crow Wing County runs 24 public schools (combined enrollment of about 9,399 students), of which RIVERSIDE ELEMENTARY is one.

The closest other public school is BRAINERD SENIOR HIGH, roughly 0.6 miles away. Counting just inside five miles, 8 other public schools cluster around RIVERSIDE ELEMENTARY. Among the 6 schools in that immediate cluster with test data (this one included), RIVERSIDE ELEMENTARY ranks 2nd on composite proficiency, above the local average of 43.2%.

RIVERSIDE ELEMENTARY operates from a town-center location.

Trend over the last 7 years. Over the past 7-year window, the student count shrank 30%: 583 students in 2018 compared to 407 in 2025. Over the same period, the White share contracted from 89% to 85%. The student-to-teacher ratio narrowed from 12.3:1 in 2018 to 10.2:1 today.

Inside the community feed, recent activity here tends to focus on fundraisers, lost-and-found posts, and report-card season. Contributors range from current parents to recent graduates and teachers.