Penny Road Elementary

Penny Road Elementary is a reasonably sized primary school in Cary, North Carolina, overseen by Wake County Schools. The school instructs 509 students in grades K through 5.

Wake County Schools comprises 198 schools with combined enrollment of 163,176 students; Penny Road Elementary is among them.

On demographics, Penny Road Elementary records that White students make up the majority at 56%; the rest comes out to 21% Hispanic, 14% Black, 4% Asian, 4% multiracial. That composition is broadly in line with Wake County as a whole.

On the resource side, The school reports having 38 full-time-equivalent teachers, for a student-teacher ratio near 13.4:1. That figure is tighter than the state norm's 14.9:1 average. An estimated 37% of students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, a number frequently used as a low-income enrollment indicator.

With demographic context factored in, Penny Road Elementary tracks the demographic baseline. The model predicts 67.6% given the school's FRL share; actual proficiency is 63.0%.

In the surrounding community, census data for Wake County shows the typical household earns roughly $105,768 per year, 57% of adults hold a bachelor's degree or higher, and the poverty rate sits near 5%. In all, Wake County runs 237 public schools (combined enrollment of about 184,790 students), of which Penny Road Elementary is one.

Oak Grove Elementary is the nearest neighboring public school, about 0.8 miles from this campus. 8 of the 8 nearest public schools sit inside a five-mile radius. On composite proficiency, Penny Road Elementary comes 6th of 8 in the immediate cluster, behind the nearby-schools average of 68.9%.

The school occupies an urban site.

Trend over the last 7 years. Looking back 7 years, enrollment at Penny Road Elementary has declined 17%, going from 614 students in 2018 to 509 in 2025. White enrollment moved from 65% to 56% across the same window. Class-load math has fell: from 16.4:1 in 2018 to 13.4:1 in 2025.

On this page, recent activity here tends to focus on classroom updates, athletics, and weather closures. Members of the school community can share what they know.