Which state has the most school districts?
🔎 Skip to the answer (ranking table)Guess
A school district is the office above the schools — it hires the staff and sets the calendar. Which states have the most districts? Tap them most-to-least.
Tapping assigns 1→4 in order
More people, more districts, right? So… New York! 🐾
Answer
The real order is…
California — 2,099 districts, about 1.7× as many as Texas. But the real surprise is at the bottom of the list. Hawaii runs all 296 of its public schools as one single district for the whole state — no other state comes close, because the state with the next-fewest, Nevada, still has 20. Florida has more than 4,000 public schools and splits them among just 83 districts, while Montana has fewer than 900 schools and 476 districts. Same country, opposite maps.
📚 Background Nobody decided from Washington how many school districts a state should have — each state drew its own map, and the maps are wildly different. Florida's constitution says "Each county shall constitute a school district", so its public schools are grouped county by county. Hawaii went further: the whole state is one district, the only statewide public school district in the country. Elsewhere, especially in thinly settled ranch and prairie country, small towns kept their own separate districts, so a state with few schools can still have hundreds of them. California has the most of all. (NCES, Common Core of Data) (opens in a new tab)
🔍 Explore more: 🗂️『One state, one school district』→ More people, more districts, right? So… New York! 🐾
Compare
Public school districts (2024-25)
Most: California (2,099 districts); fewest: Hawaii (1 districts).
Note: operating public school districts at the start of the 2024-25 school year, from NCES's Common Core of Data. The survey lists every agency responsible for free public education or education support services, so a few counted here are service agencies rather than the town district you would picture.
One state, one district?! 🐾
Recap
🏅 Today's discovery
🏅 California is the USA's #1!
🐕 States in Numbers
Quiz a friend!
📋 See the ranking table (top 50)
| Rank | State | Value |
|---|---|---|
| #1 | California | 2,099 districts |
| #2 | Texas | 1,233 districts |
| #3 | New York | 1,077 districts |
| #4 | Ohio | 1,061 districts |
| #5 | Illinois | 1,029 districts |
| #6 | Michigan | 882 districts |
| #7 | Pennsylvania | 787 districts |
| #8 | New Jersey | 697 districts |
| #9 | Arizona | 686 districts |
| #10 | Oklahoma | 579 districts |
| #11 | Minnesota | 567 districts |
| #12 | Missouri | 565 districts |
| #13 | Montana | 476 districts |
| #14 | Wisconsin | 465 districts |
| #15 | Indiana | 454 districts |
| #16 | Massachusetts | 421 districts |
| #17 | North Carolina | 356 districts |
| #18 | Iowa | 344 districts |
| #19 | Washington | 341 districts |
| #20 | Kansas | 337 districts |
| #21 | Arkansas | 307 districts |
| #22 | Nebraska | 280 districts |
| #23 | Maine | 275 districts |
| #24 | Colorado | 273 districts |
| #25 | Georgia | 253 districts |
| #26 | Oregon | 223 districts |
| #27 | North Dakota | 221 districts |
| #28 | New Hampshire | 212 districts |
| #29 | Virginia | 209 districts |
| #30 | Connecticut | 207 districts |
| #31 | Idaho | 191 districts |
| #32 | Louisiana | 189 districts |
| #33 | Vermont | 188 districts |
| #34 | Kentucky | 177 districts |
| #35 | South Dakota | 165 districts |
| #36 | Alabama | 159 districts |
| #37 | Utah | 155 districts |
| #38 | New Mexico | 154 districts |
| #39 | Mississippi | 152 districts |
| #40 | Tennessee | 149 districts |
| #41 | South Carolina | 94 districts |
| #42 | Florida | 83 districts |
| #43 | Rhode Island | 67 districts |
| #44 | West Virginia | 66 districts |
| #45 | Wyoming | 62 districts |
| #46 | Alaska | 53 districts |
| #47 | Delaware | 46 districts |
| #48 | Maryland | 25 districts |
| #49 | Nevada | 20 districts |
| #50 | Hawaii | 1 districts |
Source: National Center for Education Statistics (2024-25)
Sources
Data as of: 2024-25
NCES Common Core of Data: Summary Table 2, number of operating public school districts by state (school year 2024-25) (opens in a new tab) (2026-08-12) — Official published counts (the committed raw file holds the value per state exactly as published in the table's 'Number of operating districts' column). The survey lists every education agency responsible for providing free public elementary/secondary instruction or education support services, so a few of the agencies counted are service agencies rather than the town district you would picture.
↳ On the NCES CCD Summary Table 2 for 2024-25, find your state's row and read the 'Number of operating districts' column.