School districts in Massachusetts
28% of the 534 populated ZIP Code areas in Massachusetts are served by more than one school district — 148 of them, which puts the state 41st among the fifty-two. It is organized into 211 unified districts, 64 elementary districts and 30 secondary districts, the largest being Boston at 301,702 homes. Its most divided ZIP Code area, 01096, is split between 6 districts for elementary grades alone. In 92 of them the answer for grade school is not the answer for high school. The two districts that share the most ZIP Codes here are Ralph C. Mahar and New Salem-Wendell, in 5 of them. Counted by homes rather than by ZIP Code area, 20% of the state's housing sits in a ZIP Code that more than one district serves.
How many school districts are in Massachusetts?
305: the Census boundary file draws 305 school districts in Massachusetts that reach at least one ZIP Code area with homes, 211 unified, 64 elementary and 30 secondary. A ZIP Code here can sit in more than one of them, which is why a school district lookup by ZIP Code for Massachusetts lists them all: find your school district by ZIP code.
How often a ZIP Code here crosses a district line
Massachusetts keeps 30 separate secondary districts — districts that pick students up partway through and run to the end of high school, over several elementary districts at once. Where one of those sits, an address has two district names and neither is wrong.
- ZIP Code areas with a district534
- Served by more than one district148 (28%)
- Grade school and high school differ92 (17%)
- No high school district named2
- Unified districts211
- Elementary districts64
- Secondary districts30
- Homes in no district at all52
District pages for Massachusetts, largest first
Brookline is the largest of them by far: at 27,961 homes it holds at least 3 times as many as Lincoln-Sudbury, second on this list with 9,121. It reaches 4 ZIP Code areas, and the areas it covers alone are counted on its own page rather than assumed from its size.
The most divided ZIP Code area in Massachusetts
ZIP Code area 01096 holds 1,245 homes, and 6 districts each take a meaningful share of them for elementary grades — Williamsburg first at 52%, then Chesterfield-Goshen. A lookup that names the first is describing that share of the homes and silently not the 598 homes that remain.
Each percentage here is a share of the 1,245 homes counted in ZIP Code 01096, not the chance that any one address is in that district. Enrollment follows the street: two houses on opposite sides of the same road can be in different districts, and only the district office can say which.
Every track below is 35 cells long and stands for all 1,245 homes counted in ZIP Code 01096, so one cell is 36 homes, rounded to the nearest whole cell. Cells lit solid are the homes one district holds, and the unlit cells are the homes held by the other districts in the same list.
- Williamsburg School District647 of 1,245 homes52%
- Chesterfield-Goshen School District509 of 1,245 homes41%
- Conway School District71 of 1,245 homes5.7%
- Mohawk Trail School District18 of 1,245 homes1.4%
For grade school, an answer of one district name would be wrong for 598 of the 1,245 here.
Where a single district name still works in Massachusetts
Across the 534 ZIP Code areas in Massachusetts with homes in them, an answer of one district name misses 26,446 of the 2,998,495 homes they hold. That is 0.9% of the state, and in 379 of the areas the largest district for the early grades holds every home counted: this is a state where the familiar answer is usually the right one, and the areas below are where it is not.
In ZIP Code 02467 · Brookline, Massachusetts the largest district for grade school is Brookline, and naming it alone misses 3,890 of the 7,260 homes counted there. For grade school the rest is 3,890 homes with Newton and Boston.
ZIP Code 02568 · Vineyard Haven, Massachusetts names 4 districts. Tisbury is the largest of them for grade school, and an answer of its name alone misses 2,145 of the 5,371 homes there; for grade school the rest is 2,145 homes with Oak Bluffs and Up-Island Regional.
In ZIP Code 01230 · Great Barrington, Massachusetts the largest district for grade school is Berkshire Hills, and naming it alone misses 1,946 of the 5,069 homes counted there. For grade school the rest is 1,946 homes with Southern Berkshire.
Where a ZIP Code here names more than one district
Of the 534 ZIP Code areas in Massachusetts that the federal file names a district for, 148 name more than one school district. These are the 12 with the most, starting at 6 districts in one postal area: Williamsburg, North Adams and Rowe. Each row opens the full answer for that ZIP Code, with every district named for grade school and for high school and the share of the homes each one holds.
- ZIP Code 01096 · Williamsburg, Massachusetts6 districts · 1,245 homes · two bands, two answers
- ZIP Code 01039 · Williamsburg, Massachusetts5 districts · 699 homes · two bands, two answers
- ZIP Code 01247 · North Adams, Massachusetts5 districts · 7,889 homes · two bands, two answers
- ZIP Code 01367 · Rowe, Massachusetts5 districts · 279 homes · two bands, two answers
- ZIP Code 01370 · Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts5 districts · 2,041 homes · two bands, two answers
- ZIP Code 01201 · Pittsfield, Massachusetts4 districts · 22,631 homes · two bands, two answers
- ZIP Code 01002 · Amherst Town, Massachusetts4 districts · 11,314 homes · two bands, two answers
- ZIP Code 01008 · Blandford, Massachusetts4 districts · 614 homes · two bands, two answers
- ZIP Code 01355 · New Salem, Massachusetts4 districts · 412 homes · two bands, two answers
- ZIP Code 01731 · Hanscom AFB, Massachusetts4 districts · 446 homes · two bands, two answers
- ZIP Code 01773 · Waltham, Massachusetts4 districts · 2,360 homes · two bands, two answers
- ZIP Code 02568 · Vineyard Haven, Massachusetts4 districts · 5,371 homes · two bands, two answers
What to do next
Ask the district office to confirm your street address: look on its site for a school locator, a find my school tool or an attendance zone map, or call the office.
A ZIP Code is a set of mail delivery routes, not a boundary: 148 of the 534 ZIP Code areas in Massachusetts with a district named for them are served by more than one school district, and the line between two of them runs along streets. Only the district can say which side of that line an address is on.
District websites and phone numbers here come from the NCES Common Core of Data directory, 2024-25 school year, filed under the same district ID as the Census boundary files. Where it lists no usable website, none is printed rather than guessed.
If a house purchase depends on the answer, ask the district itself for written confirmation of that exact address. A listing is not a district record, and neither is this page.
Where these numbers come from
The homes were counted in the 2020 Census and the district lines are the 2026 boundary file, so a fast-growing area may have changed since; ZIP Codes here are the Census Bureau's ZIP Code Tabulation Areas; a share is a share of homes, not the chance that one address is in a district; and a district is not a school attendance zone. Every source, file and caveat is on the method page.