PRAIRIE BRANCH ELEM.

PRAIRIE BRANCH ELEM., a heavily attended elementary campus in GRAIN VALLEY, Missouri, one of the schools within GRAIN VALLEY R-V, teaches 567 students, covering grades K through 5. Enrollment runs roughly 80% bigger than the state mean of about 315.

Across the 8 schools in GRAIN VALLEY R-V (4,546 students total), PRAIRIE BRANCH ELEM. accounts for its share of the district's footprint.

On demographics, PRAIRIE BRANCH ELEM. lists that the student body is overwhelmingly White (81%). The remainder breaks down as 8% Hispanic, 7% multiracial, 3% Black. That is meaningfully more White than the county at large, where the share is closer to 62%.

In terms of school funding signals, Staff filings list 49 full-time-equivalent teachers, which works out to roughly 11.5:1 students per teacher. The state averages around 12.4:1, so this campus is tighter than the state norm typical. Roughly 15% of students at PRAIRIE BRANCH ELEM. qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, a commonly cited indicator of low-income enrollment. That share is south of Jackson County's rate of about 60%.

After controlling for student poverty, PRAIRIE BRANCH ELEM. performs roughly as the BeatsExpectations model predicts for a school with this FRL share. The predicted value is around 51.0%, the actual is 51.0%, a residual of +0.1 points.

In the broader community, census data for Jackson County shows the typical household earns roughly $68,577 per year, 34% of adults hold a bachelor's degree or higher, and the poverty rate sits near 10%. Across Jackson County's 244 public schools (combined enrollment of about 105,714 students), PRAIRIE BRANCH ELEM. is one campus in the mix.

The closest other public school is GRAIN VALLEY EARLY CHILDHD CTR, roughly 1.0 miles away. Within five miles, there are 8 other public schools. On composite proficiency, PRAIRIE BRANCH ELEM. comes 5th of 8 in the immediate cluster, higher than the nearby-schools average of 49.6%.

Geographically, the school is in an outer-ring area.

Trend over the last 7 years. Looking back 7 years, enrollment at PRAIRIE BRANCH ELEM. has changed only slightly, going from 559 students in 2018 to 567 in 2025. The White share of enrollment edged down from 85% to 81% over that span. Class-load math has narrowed: from 12.8:1 in 2018 to 11.5:1 in 2025.

On the community side, posts here usually surface around science fair prep, picture-day reminders, and bus-route questions. Contributors range from current parents to recent graduates and teachers.