School districts in Wisconsin
Wisconsin ranks 3rd among the states for how often the mail and the schools disagree: 77% of its 781 populated ZIP Code areas are served by more than one school district, against 53% across the country. The worst of them is 53105, where 10 districts each hold a real share of the homes and Burlington Area leads with the largest. In 61 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 Herman-Neosho-Rubicon and Hartford Union High, in 7 of them. Counted by homes rather than by ZIP Code area, 79% of the state's housing sits in a ZIP Code that more than one district serves.
How many school districts are in Wisconsin?
421: the Census boundary file draws 421 school districts in Wisconsin that reach at least one ZIP Code area with homes, 368 unified, 43 elementary and 10 secondary. A ZIP Code here can sit in more than one of them, which is why a school district lookup by ZIP Code for Wisconsin lists them all: find your school district by ZIP code.
Seven ZIP Codes in ten here cross a district line
Wisconsin keeps 10 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 district781
- Served by more than one district600 (77%)
- Grade school and high school differ61 (7.8%)
- No high school district named0
- Unified districts368
- Elementary districts43
- Secondary districts10
- Homes in no district at all3
District pages for Wisconsin, largest first
Milwaukee is the largest of them by far: at 257,723 homes it holds at least 5 times as many as Appleton Area, second on this list with 43,507. It reaches 31 ZIP Code areas, and the areas it covers alone are counted on its own page rather than assumed from its size.
- Milwaukee School District257,723 homes · 31 ZIP areas
- Appleton Area School District43,507 homes · 5 ZIP areas
- West Allis School District32,676 homes · 7 ZIP areas
- Greenfield School District14,264 homes · 5 ZIP areas
- Verona Area School District11,856 homes · 6 ZIP areas
- West De Pere School District9,931 homes · 4 ZIP areas
The most divided ZIP Code area in Wisconsin
ZIP Code area 53105 holds 12,890 homes and 10 districts take a real share of them for the early grades, but Burlington Area holds 75% on its own at that level. This is the shape that makes a single-name lookup look right: it names Burlington Area and describes most of the homes here, and silently not the rest.
Each percentage here is a share of the 12,890 homes counted in ZIP Code 53105, 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 12,890 homes counted in ZIP Code 53105, so one cell is 368 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.
- Burlington Area School District9,634 of 12,890 homes75%
- Wheatland Joint No. 1 School District1,406 of 12,890 homes11%
- Waterford Joint No. 1 School District810 of 12,890 homes6.3%
- Lake Geneva Joint No. 1 School District367 of 12,890 homes2.8%
- Randall Joint No. 1 School District323 of 12,890 homes2.5%
- East Troy Community School District240 of 12,890 homes1.9%
3 further districts reach into this area and hold 110 homes between them, under half a percent of the homes named at this level each.
For grade school, an answer of one district name would be wrong for 3,256 of the 12,890 here.
How much of Wisconsin a single district name misses
Across the 781 ZIP Code areas in Wisconsin with homes in them, an answer of one district name misses 323,514 of the 2,727,764 homes they hold — 12% of the state. In 162 of those areas the largest district for the early grades holds every home counted; in the other 619 it leaves some out. That is a different count from the 600 areas served by more than one district: it also counts districts under half a percent of the homes and homes in no district, and it does not count a high school district that differs.
ZIP Code 54115 · Hobart, Wisconsin names 5 districts. West De Pere is the largest of them for grade school, and an answer of its name alone misses 10,223 of the 19,584 homes there; for grade school the rest is 10,131 homes with De Pere Unified, Wrightstown Community, Freedom Area and one more district; 92 homes in districts too small to name here.
In ZIP Code 53219 · Milwaukee, Wisconsin the largest district for grade school is Milwaukee, and naming it alone misses 8,040 of the 16,080 homes counted there. For grade school the rest is 8,040 homes with West Allis and Greenfield.
In ZIP Code 53211 · Milwaukee, Wisconsin the largest district for grade school is Milwaukee, and naming it alone misses 8,016 of the 16,976 homes counted there. For grade school the rest is 8,016 homes with Shorewood and Whitefish Bay.
Where a ZIP Code here names more than one district
Of the 781 ZIP Code areas in Wisconsin that the federal file names a district for, 600 name more than one school district. These are the 12 with the most, starting at 10 districts in one postal area: Rochester, Yorkville and Richfield. 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 53105 · Rochester, Wisconsin10 districts · 12,890 homes · two bands, two answers
- ZIP Code 53182 · Yorkville, Wisconsin9 districts · 3,525 homes · two bands, two answers
- ZIP Code 53017 · Richfield, Wisconsin8 districts · 2,152 homes · two bands, two answers
- ZIP Code 53147 · Lake Geneva, Wisconsin8 districts · 10,866 homes · two bands, two answers
- ZIP Code 53029 · Hartland, Wisconsin7 districts · 8,688 homes · two bands, two answers
- ZIP Code 53072 · Pewaukee, Wisconsin7 districts · 12,077 homes · two bands, two answers
- ZIP Code 53126 · Raymond, Wisconsin7 districts · 2,749 homes · two bands, two answers
- ZIP Code 53128 · Bloomfield, Wisconsin7 districts · 4,062 homes · two bands, two answers
- ZIP Code 53139 · Eagle Lake, Wisconsin7 districts · 1,312 homes · two bands, two answers
- ZIP Code 54411 · Athens, Wisconsin7 districts · 2,011 homes
- ZIP Code 54937 · Fond du Lac, Wisconsin7 districts · 8,999 homes
- ZIP Code 53027 · Hartford, Wisconsin6 districts · 10,018 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: 600 of the 781 ZIP Code areas in Wisconsin 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.