The top reported proficiency rate is 43% in English language arts. The lowest is 33% in Science.
Original Research by School Decision on Stephen Foster Elementary School
Stephen Foster Elementary sits on NW 6th Street in Gainesville, a university city in north central Florida shaped by the presence of the University of Florida and its affiliated healthcare and research institutions. The area has a college-town character that feels smaller and more contained than Florida's larger metros, even as Gainesville grows steadily. The school serves kindergarten through fifth grade as a regular public elementary school within Alachua County Public Schools.
The enrollment is small to mid-sized for an elementary school, spread roughly evenly across grade levels. The student body is racially and ethnically mixed: Black students make up the largest share, followed by white students, then Hispanic students, with smaller Asian and multiracial populations. Economically, a substantial majority of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, meaning this school serves a largely lower-income community. Data on English learners and students with IEPs was not available in what was provided.
On state assessments, Stephen Foster's results are below the midpoint among districts in Alachua County across the tested subjects and grades, sitting in the bottom quartile of that comparison set. Reading through the grade-level detail: in ELA, proficiency runs from the upper thirties to the mid-forties across third, fourth, and fifth grades. In math, results are similar, ranging from the mid-thirties to the low forties. Fifth-grade science proficiency comes in lower still, in the low thirties. These figures are worth a direct conversation with the school: what the school is doing to address gaps, what supports are in place, and how individual students within these averages are progressing. Trend data was not available, so whether performance is moving in any direction cannot be said from this data alone.
One concrete piece of context for these numbers is the district itself. Alachua County voters renewed a dedicated property tax in late 2024 that runs through mid-2029 and funds art, music, drama, band, chorus, school nurses, librarians, counselors, career-technical programs, and academic magnets across county schools. It covers all or part of the salaries of a substantial share of district teachers, and its renewal as an existing tax means it did not add a new charge to homeowners' bills. For families at Stephen Foster, this matters because it keeps specialist teachers and counselors in the building that might otherwise be cut in a tighter budget.
A separate district development worth tracking is the year-round calendar pilot. Metcalfe and Rawlings Elementary Schools were moved to a year-round schedule starting in the summer of 2024, with the same number of instructional days but breaks distributed differently. Stephen Foster was not part of this pilot, so its calendar is unaffected. But the episode is worth noting because the board reversed course on Rawlings in spring 2025 after enrollment dropped and parent satisfaction came in low, showing that the district is willing to experiment and also to pull back when results disappoint.
Graduation rate does not apply here; the school ends at fifth grade.
The neighborhood housing market around Stephen Foster shows home values meaningfully below Florida's statewide median, with modest year-over-year softening. Rents in the zip code have been rising modestly. The rent-to-income ratio sits in a range that is not extreme by national standards, and the gap between renting and buying is relatively tight, which can cut either way depending on a family's situation. For a family weighing whether to settle near this school, the local housing costs are among the more accessible in Florida, though the broader Gainesville market is actively adding density near the university core and in newer suburban communities farther out.
Programs data was not available for Stephen Foster specifically, so the full picture of what enrichment, support, or specialty offerings exist within the building is a gap a parent would want to fill directly with the school.
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