Independent rankings of Elementary schools in Tampa Bay with Gifted programs, built from director interviews and verified data — never from school payments.
Not sure which fits your child? Take the 2-minute match quiz.
Get your top 5 matches — ranked by grades, budget, location, and your child's strengths.
Looking for the best elementary schools in Tampa Bay? We track 32 K-12 options that serve elementary grades. Annual tuition ranges from $10.5K/yr to $17.7K/yr, with a median of $13.3K/yr across schools that publish a number. Tampa has the highest concentration with 17 schools, followed by St. Petersburg (6). 7 of these schools accept Florida Step Up / FES scholarships — roughly 22% of the list — so families using state-funded scholarships have real choice here.
Elementary admissions decisions tend to weigh family fit and developmental readiness more than test scores. Most schools assess via a play-based visit at age 4-5 and rolling interviews for K-5 transfers. Every school is re-verified through direct outreach to admissions teams; data is refreshed on a 180-day cadence and timestamped on each profile.
See also: Learning Support, IB (International Baccalaureate), Language Immersion.
We rank by how well each school fits your family — academics, cost, distance, and values. Never by size, popularity, or payment (schools can’t pay for rank). The coarse admission-likelihood band is always free.
Safety Harbor·Pinellas County·Grades PK-08·~466 students
State-licensed
Selective private school — we don’t have a verified acceptance rate yet. Similar schools admit a solid share of applicants. A general signal by school type, not a personalized estimate.
Tarpon Springs·Pinellas County·Grades KG-12·~151 students
State-licensed
Selective private school — we don’t have a verified acceptance rate yet. Similar schools admit a solid share of applicants. A general signal by school type, not a personalized estimate.
Tampa·Hillsborough County·Grades PK-12·~83 students
State-licensed
Selective private school — we don’t have a verified acceptance rate yet. Similar schools admit a solid share of applicants. A general signal by school type, not a personalized estimate.
St Petersburg·Pinellas County·Grades KG-09·~48 students
State-licensed
Selective private school — we don’t have a verified acceptance rate yet. Similar schools admit a solid share of applicants. A general signal by school type, not a personalized estimate.
Wesley Chapel·Pasco County·Grades K-8·~1,259 students
DOE 2026 · NCES
Open-enrollment charter — most applicants are admitted when seats remain; oversubscribed grades use a lottery. General signal, not personalized.
Tampa·Hillsborough County·Grades K-8·~1,169 students
DOE 2026 · NCES
Open-enrollment charter — most applicants are admitted when seats remain; oversubscribed grades use a lottery. General signal, not personalized.
Tampa·Hillsborough County·Grades K-8·~984 students
DOE 2026 · NCES
Open-enrollment charter — most applicants are admitted when seats remain; oversubscribed grades use a lottery. General signal, not personalized.
Tampa·Hillsborough County·Grades K-8·~907 students
DOE 2026 · NCES
Open-enrollment charter — most applicants are admitted when seats remain; oversubscribed grades use a lottery. General signal, not personalized.
Tampa·Hillsborough County·Grades K-8·~783 students
DOE 2026 · NCES
Open-enrollment charter — most applicants are admitted when seats remain; oversubscribed grades use a lottery. General signal, not personalized.
Tampa·Hillsborough County·Grades K-8·~782 students
DOE 2026 · NCES
Built relationships, not scrapers. AdmitCompass ranks schools using a composite score that blends four signals: enrollment size (a proxy for stability and program breadth), tuition reasonableness within the local market, freshness of our most recent verification, and a small bonus for schools with full admissions detail published on their profile.
Public data comes from the Florida Department of Education (FLDOE), the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), and each school's own admissions pages. The information that actually matters to most families — acceptance rates, deadlines, what a director cares about — comes from direct interviews with school directors and admissions coaches across our active markets.
We do not publish scoring weights or per-axis thresholds. That keeps the moat intact: the rankings reflect actual conversations with people inside schools, not a formula anyone with a crawler could clone. Every profile is re-verified on a 180-day cadence, and the "last updated" date is timestamped on every school page.
Combine filters to get a tighter shortlist.
Adjacent searches families often run from here.
Our 2-minute quiz factors in grades, budget, location, and goals to surface the best-fit schools from this list.