Walnut Street School is a public elementary school in Des Moines, Iowa, for students in grades PK–5. Recent data shows that the school has about 244 students and a student-to-teacher ratio of about 14:1. Walnut Street School has a preschool program and is known for its gifted education programs, which offer different kinds of instruction to meet the needs of all kinds of learners. The student body is pretty diverse: about 33% are Black, 32% are White, 20% are Hispanic, 5–6% are Asian, and about 10% say they are two or more races. More than 55% of the students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, which means that many of them come from low-income families. The academic performance of students at Walnut Street School is not very good. Only about 42% of students are good at math and 57% are good at reading and English Language Arts, which is lower than the state average. The school spends a lot of money on each student each year, about $16,042. The school is in downtown Des Moines and serves a close-knit urban community where housing is easier to find than in the suburbs. In general, Walnut Street School is strong in diversity and investing in resources, but it has academic problems with proficiency that show where it can improve.