ROOTS ACADEMY AT WEST HILL

ROOTS ACADEMY AT WEST HILL, a close-knit elementary campus in ALBANY, New York, part of ALBANY CITY SCHOOL DISTRICT, caters to 283 students, covering grades pre-K through 5. By comparison, New York's public schools average about 443 students each, so ROOTS ACADEMY AT WEST HILL sits 36% leaner than that benchmark.

ALBANY CITY SCHOOL DISTRICT runs 16 schools in total, collectively educating 8,509 students. ROOTS ACADEMY AT WEST HILL is one of those campuses.

On demographics, ROOTS ACADEMY AT WEST HILL reports that the largest single group is Black at 43%, but no single group is in the majority. Other groups include 21% Hispanic, 19% Asian, 10% multiracial, 6% White. That is meaningfully more Black than the county at large, where the share is closer to 12%.

On the income-and-resources front, On paper, ROOTS ACADEMY AT WEST HILL has 18 full-time-equivalent teachers, translating to a class-load average of around 15.9:1. The state averages around 12.8:1, so this campus is higher than the state norm typical. Around 87% of the student body qualifies for free or reduced-price meals, which schools and policymakers use as a rough income-mix signal. That share is above Albany County's rate of about 45%.

After controlling for student poverty, ROOTS ACADEMY AT WEST HILL is in the bottom 10% of New York public schools. The BeatsExpectations model predicts schools with this FRL share to land around 43.1%; ROOTS ACADEMY AT WEST HILL posts 17.2%, -25.9 points below that line.

In the surrounding community, community-level numbers for Albany County indicate median household income runs about $85,333, 46% of adults hold a bachelor's degree or higher, and census figures put the poverty rate at about 8%. In all, Albany County runs 75 public schools (combined enrollment of about 39,946 students), of which ROOTS ACADEMY AT WEST HILL is one.

Nearest neighbor: ALBANY HIGH SCHOOL, around 0.4 miles off. 8 of the 8 nearest public schools sit inside a five-mile radius. Among the 8 schools in that immediate cluster with test data (this one included), ROOTS ACADEMY AT WEST HILL ranks 8th on composite proficiency, below the local average of 44.1%.

The campus sits in an urban setting.

Over the past 7-year window. Looking back 7 years, enrollment at ROOTS ACADEMY AT WEST HILL has held roughly steady, going from 278 students in 2018 to 283 in 2025. Asian enrollment moved from 5% to 19% across the same window. The student-to-teacher ratio loosened from 12.1:1 in 2018 to 15.9:1 today.

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