Community Intelligence
Enter an address and see the community around it: how many school-age children live nearby, which schools already serve them, and where families gather. Built for founders choosing between neighborhoods before they choose a building. Your first lookup needs no account.
What Community Intelligence shows
- School-age children nearby, broken out by age band, for the radius you choose
- How the child population has moved since 2020, and a projection to 2030
- Existing schools in the area, with enrollment, grade span, and year-over-year trend
- Household income, educational attainment, and housing context for the same area
- Where families already gather: faith communities, libraries, childcare providers, parks
- Traffic and accessibility around the site, plus flood zone and site conditions
Where the numbers come from
Every figure traces to a public source, and the report names the source next to the number so you can check it or cite it to a board.
- US Census Bureau American Community Survey, 5-year estimates
- National Center for Education Statistics: Common Core of Data and the Private School Universe Survey
- 2020 US Religion Census, for faith communities by county
- OpenStreetMap, for libraries, parks, childcare, and community centers
Reading enrollment against population
The report puts school-age children nearby next to the seats existing schools already fill. That comparison is community context, not a forecast of who would enroll with you. Enrollment counts show how many seats are filled, not how many are open, and NCES does not publish school capacity.
SNAP participation and free and reduced-price lunch shares appear as factual community context. They indicate Title I eligibility and can help you judge mission alignment and likely family cost sensitivity.
Who uses it
Microschool founders comparing two or three neighborhoods, charter leaders writing the community-need section of an application, and school operators who want to understand the families near a building before they tour it.
What Space does not decide
SchoolStack Space produces planning-level estimates that help you ask better questions before you commit to a building. It does not determine legal use, zoning, building code outcomes, certificate of occupancy, licensing, insurance, authorizer decisions, or financing.
Treat every number here as a starting range to verify with your architect, your local planning and building departments, the fire marshal, and your authorizer or licensing agency.
Frequently asked questions
How do I find out how many school-age children live near a school site?
Enter the address in Community Intelligence and choose a radius. The report returns children ages 3 to 17 for that area, broken out by age band, from US Census American Community Survey 5-year estimates, alongside how the child population has moved since 2020.
How can I tell whether a neighborhood already has enough schools?
The report lists the schools within your radius with their enrollment, grade span, and year-over-year trend, and shows that total next to the school-age population nearby. Read it as context for a conversation, not an answer: enrollment shows seats filled rather than seats available, so confirm waitlists and capacity with each school directly.
Does Community Intelligence predict how many students will enroll?
No. It reports who lives in the area and what schools already operate there. It does not forecast demand, project your enrollment, or tell you whether a school will fill. Those depend on your program, recruitment, and local factors no dataset captures.
Do I need an account to use it?
Your first lookup is free and needs no account. Creating a free account lets you run more lookups, save sites to compare later, and unlock the written community brief and the community partner list.