The top reported proficiency rate is 75% in Math. The lowest is 57% in Science.
Original Research by School Decision on Macclenny Elementary School
Macclenny Elementary sits at the center of Baker County's only school district, serving children from first through fifth grade in a small city that functions as the county seat of a rural Northeast Florida community. The school is a conventional public elementary, not a charter or magnet program, and draws from a student body that is predominantly white with smaller shares of Black, Hispanic, multiracial, and Asian students. A majority of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, which signals a meaningful economic need across the school's families. Data on English learner and special education populations were not available in the records we reviewed, so parents with children in those categories may want to ask the school directly about services and staffing.
On Florida's FAST assessments, the school's math results in third grade are genuinely strong, with the large majority of tested students reaching proficiency. Results at fourth grade remain solid, though the share meeting the bar drops noticeably. By fifth grade, math proficiency falls further and sits closer to the midpoint of what state testing would consider passing. Reading and language arts follow a similar arc: third grade comes in above average, fourth grade is softer, and fifth grade, along with the fifth-grade science assessment, lands well below what most families would consider comfortable. The downward slope from third to fifth grade across both subjects is the pattern a parent would most want to explore with the school, asking what supports are available as students advance through the upper elementary grades.
Multi-year trend data was not available, so it is not possible from these records to say whether scores have been improving, holding steady, or slipping. The comparison framework for this school is limited because Baker County has only a single district, meaning there is no meaningful peer-district comparison set to place these results in local context. State-level framing is the only available reference, and the FAST proficiency figures above are drawn from that statewide reporting.
The community around the school is Macclenny, a small city west of Jacksonville along the I-10 corridor with a working-class, small-town feel that residents say they actively want to protect. The largest employer in Baker County is a state-operated psychiatric hospital, and public administration, construction, and the school district itself account for a meaningful slice of local employment. Home values here run below the Florida statewide benchmark, and recent year-over-year appreciation has been modest, making this one of the more affordable entry points within commuting range of the Jacksonville metro. The city is car-dependent outside of the modest historic downtown on US 90, where civic institutions including the library, city hall, and the county courthouse cluster together.
Growth pressure is real and publicly debated. Publicly reported coverage from early 2025 describes a proposed large-scale master-planned development that drew significant resident pushback over concerns about infrastructure strain and the loss of rural character. The school district brief returned no confirmed recent changes or initiatives, so information about how Baker County schools are responding to growth, adjusting staffing, or planning facilities could not be verified and was left out rather than guessed at.
For a family weighing this school, the picture is an accessible, affordable small-town setting with a school that produces strong early elementary math results but where proficiency in reading and upper-grade math and science leaves room to ask the school what academic supports exist for students who need more. The enrollment is moderate for an elementary school of this grade span. A parent looking for specialty programs, gifted tracks, or detailed civil-rights outcome data will need to contact the school directly, as that information was not present in the records reviewed.
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