ZIP Code 85281 · Tempe, Arizona
Maricopa County · 32,937 counted · 4 districts
Each percentage here is a share of the 32,937 homes counted in ZIP Code 85281, 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.
The districts named for the early grades in ZIP Code 85281, Tempe, Arizona are not the districts named for high school, and the set changes in both directions: 1 district arrives for high school only, 1 runs the early grades and stops, and 2 serve both bands. 4 districts hold the 32,937 homes counted here between them, and Tempe School District and Tempe Union High hold the most of them, 30,914 homes each. The largest share is high enough that one name is right for most of the homes counted and wrong for the other 2,023: 2,023 homes with Scottsdale Unified and Mesa Unified.
Three districts share the early grades
3 districts hold a measurable share of ZIP Code 85281 at this level. Tempe School District is the largest with 30,914 homes; the smallest of them holds 408 homes. Tempe School District is named here for grade school and not for high school.
Every track below is 35 cells long and stands for all 32,937 homes counted in ZIP Code 85281, so one cell is 941 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.
- Tempe School District30,914 of 32,937 homes94%
- Scottsdale Unified District1,615 of 32,937 homes4.9%
- Mesa Unified District408 of 32,937 homes1.2%
Three districts share high school
3 districts hold a measurable share of ZIP Code 85281 at this level. Tempe Union High is the largest with 30,914 homes; the smallest of them holds 408 homes. Tempe Union High is named here for high school and not for the early grades.
- Tempe Union High School District30,914 of 32,937 homes94%
- Scottsdale Unified District1,615 of 32,937 homes4.9%
- Mesa Unified District408 of 32,937 homes1.2%
Have a street address?
A ZIP Code names every district that can serve the area; a street address settles which one serves a home. The Census Bureau geocoder takes an exact address and returns its school districts from the current boundary files, free and with no account.
Check an exact address with the Census Geocoder
Then confirm it with the district office. Each district named here, with its NCES district ID, website and phone:
- Tempe School District NCES ID 0408310 tempeschools.org (480) 730-7100
- Tempe Union High School District NCES ID 0408340 tempeunion.org (480) 839-0292
- Scottsdale Unified District NCES ID 0407570 susd.org (480) 484-6100
- Mesa Unified District NCES ID 0404970 mpsaz.org (480) 472-0200
The set of names changes in both directions
Tempe Union High is named for high school here and for no elementary grades, and Tempe School District runs the early grades and no more. An address on the wrong street can therefore change district at the change of grade and land in a district that was never part of its elementary answer, while a neighbor two blocks away keeps one name the whole way through.
What one district name costs in 85281
A lookup that answers ZIP Code 85281 with one district name has to pick one of the names below and drop the rest. Measured against the 32,937 homes counted here, for the early grades it is wrong for 2,023 homes and for high school it is wrong for 2,023 homes. That is the whole difference between this page and a one-line answer: the same federal file, read to the end instead of to the first row.
The districts that reach into 85281
The districts named above are not alike in size or in reach. Mesa Unified touches 24 ZIP Code areas in all and holds 408 homes inside this one; Tempe School District touches 12 areas. Scottsdale Unified is the only district in at least one ZIP Code area somewhere in the country, while Tempe School District is never the only one anywhere: every postal area it touches, it shares.
- Tempe School District30,914 of 32,937 here · 12 ZIP areas in all
- Tempe Union High School District30,914 of 32,937 here · 19 ZIP areas in all
- Scottsdale Unified District1,615 of 32,937 here · 14 ZIP areas in all
- Mesa Unified District408 of 32,937 here · 24 ZIP areas in all
Where Tempe School District goes from here
Tempe School District runs pre-K through grade 8, and it shares 7 of the 12 ZIP Code areas it touches with neighbors, holds under half a percent of the homes in the remaining 5, and is the only district in none of them. Inside its own boundary it holds 72,169 homes over 36 square miles; the part of it counted in ZIP Code 85281 is 30,914 of those. The district it shares the most postal ground with is Tempe Union High School District, across 7 ZIP Code areas. Its thinnest measured foothold is elsewhere: in ZIP Code area 85044 it holds 1,075 of 18,507 homes, or 5.8% of them.
How 85281 compares in Arizona
Across Arizona the boundary file names more than one district in 259 of the 409 ZIP Code areas it names a district for, 63% of them, and 72 areas in the state have no high school district named for part of their homes. Counting the districts named at either level, 23 areas in Arizona name more than this ZIP Code does and 351 name fewer. Nationally more than one district is named in 53% of 33,555 areas.
Look up 85281 again, or look up another ZIP Code
The lookup holds every ZIP Code area in the country with homes in it, including the ones with no page of their own. Opening it at 85281 recomputes the same 32,937 homes from the same snapshot, and typing five other digits answers for somewhere else. No server is asked for the answer: the whole index travels with the lookup page itself.
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: 2,023 of the 32,937 homes counted in 85281 sit outside each of the 2 districts tied for the most of them, and the line runs along streets rather than around the postal area.
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.
What this site can hand you instead:
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.