Largest Public Schools in San Francisco, CA
The largest public schools located in San Francisco, California, ranked by enrollment in the 2023–24 NCES Common Core of Data, with lunch-eligibility figures for each campus.
Public schools physically located in San Francisco enrolled 56,362 students in the 2023–24 school year across 125 campuses with reported enrollment. City pages answer a different question from district pages: a district is a governing agency that can span many cities, while this page groups individual campuses by the city in their CCD location address. The distinction matters in metros like San Francisco, where one district may run most campuses but charter and neighboring-district schools also sit inside city limits. Every figure here is a campus figure from the school-level CCD files, labeled 2023–24.
The 15 largest schools in San Francisco
| # | School | District / agency | Level | Enrollment 2023–24 | Free/reduced lunch |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Five Keys Independence HS (SF Sheriff's) | Five Keys Independence HS (SF Sheriff's) District | High | 3,172 | 36% |
| 2 | Lowell High | San Francisco Unified | High | 2,540 | 39% |
| 3 | Lincoln (Abraham) High | San Francisco Unified | High | 2,037 | 50% |
| 4 | Washington (George) High | San Francisco Unified | High | 2,008 | 50% |
| 5 | Galileo High | San Francisco Unified | High | 1,741 | 58% |
| 6 | Balboa High | San Francisco Unified | High | 1,251 | 61% |
| 7 | Giannini (A.P.) Middle | San Francisco Unified | Middle | 1,193 | 37% |
| 8 | Mission High | San Francisco Unified | High | 1,084 | 59% |
| 9 | Burton (Phillip and Sala) Academic High | San Francisco Unified | High | 1,031 | 61% |
| 10 | Presidio Middle | San Francisco Unified | Middle | 980 | 35% |
| 11 | Hoover (Herbert) Middle | San Francisco Unified | Middle | 948 | 60% |
| 12 | Aptos Middle | San Francisco Unified | Middle | 857 | 60% |
| 13 | Denman (James) Middle | San Francisco Unified | Middle | 790 | 61% |
| 14 | Asawa (Ruth) SF Sch of the Arts A Public School | San Francisco Unified | High | 680 | 18% |
| 15 | Lilienthal (Claire) Elementary | San Francisco Unified | Elementary | 670 | 21% |
The largest campus, Five Keys Independence HS (SF Sheriff's), enrolled 3,172 students — 5.6% of all students in schools located in the city. Large comprehensive high schools dominate the top of most city rankings because elementary schools are deliberately kept small and neighborhood-based, while high schools consolidate whole districts into a few campuses. Where a very large campus is a virtual or alternative school, its CCD school type says so in the source file, and readers should weigh that before comparing it with a traditional campus.
Reading the lunch-eligibility column
Across the 15 largest San Francisco campuses that reported lunch counts, 46.6% of students were eligible for free or reduced-price lunch in 2023–24.
Eligibility is a family-income measure collected through the National School Lunch Program and reported to NCES by each school. Campuses marked n/r did not report a usable count — in some cases because the school serves all meals free under the Community Eligibility Provision and reports through a different route. The column is therefore best read campus by campus, and the aggregate above is computed only over reporting campuses, which the text states openly rather than burying in a footnote.
How city totals relate to district totals
If you add the campuses here, the sum will not match any single district’s enrollment, and it is not supposed to: district totals count every student a district serves wherever the campus sits, while this page counts every student in campuses located in San Francisco whichever district runs them. For agency-level figures — staffing, spending and diplomas — use the district pages in the district index or the California state pages for statewide totals. Both views come from the same 2023–24 CCD files; they simply group the same schools two different ways.
Frequently asked questions
What is the largest public school in San Francisco?
Five Keys Independence HS (SF Sheriff's) is the largest public school located in San Francisco, California, with 3,172 students in the 2023–24 NCES CCD School Membership file.
How many public school students are in San Francisco?
Schools located within San Francisco city limits enroll 56,362 students in total in 2023–24; the 15 largest campuses listed here account for 20,982 of them. City limits are not district boundaries, so this is a campus-location total, not a district total.
Data: National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) Common Core of Data and EDFacts, retrieved October 2026, from nces.ed.gov. Enrollment, staffing and lunch figures are for the 2023–24 school year; finance figures are fiscal year 2024 (school year 2023–24) unless a page labels them otherwise.
Disclaimer: Public School Stats republishes official federal statistics for general information only. Figures are reported as published by NCES and EDFacts and may include imputed or revised values; for decisions affecting a specific school or district, confirm the figure with the district or the NCES source file. See our full Disclaimer.