Helen Stafford Elementary School

Helen Stafford Elementary School is one of the mid-tier elementary schools in Tacoma, Washington, one of the schools within Tacoma School District, with 453 students on its rolls from grades pre-K through 5.

Within Tacoma School District, which oversees 66 schools and 28,900 students, Helen Stafford Elementary School is one campus in the system.

Demographically, Helen Stafford Elementary School logs that the most-represented group is Hispanic (30%), with the rest of the student body spread across multiple groups. The remainder comes out to 17% Asian, 17% multiracial, 15% White, 13% Black. The wider county runs roughly 13% Hispanic, putting the school's mix considerably more Hispanic than the area baseline.

On the income-and-resources front, On paper, Helen Stafford Elementary School has 24 full-time-equivalent teachers, translating to a class-load average of around 19.0:1. That figure is higher than the state norm's 17.3:1 average. Around 74% 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 north of Pierce County's rate of about 50%.

Adjusting for the school's free-and-reduced-lunch share, Helen Stafford Elementary School performs roughly as the BeatsExpectations model predicts for a school with this FRL share. The predicted value is around 30.3%, the actual is 30.0%, a residual of -0.3 points.

In the surrounding community, ACS estimates for Pierce County put median household income runs about $99,564, roughly 31% of adults have completed at least a four-year degree, and the poverty rate sits near 6%. Helen Stafford Elementary School is one of 287 public schools in Pierce County (combined enrollment of about 138,462 students).

Fern Hill Elementary School is the nearest neighboring public school, about 0.7 miles from this campus. Counting just inside five miles, 8 other public schools cluster around Helen Stafford Elementary School. On composite proficiency, Helen Stafford Elementary School comes 6th of 9 in the immediate cluster, beneath the nearby-schools average of 37.1%.

Geographically, the school is in an inner-city area.

Looking at the recent track record. Over the past 7-year window, the student count shrank 12%: 517 students in 2018 compared to 453 in 2025. Class-load math has rose: from 16.8:1 in 2018 to 19.0:1 in 2025.

Within the allk12 community for this school, posts here usually surface around science fair prep, picture-day reminders, and bus-route questions. Anyone with firsthand experience at this school can post or comment.