The top reported proficiency rate is 58% in Science. The lowest is 49% in English language arts.
Original Research by School Decision on Westside Elementary School
Westside Elementary sits on Applegate Drive in Spring Hill, a sprawling, car-dependent residential community on Florida's Nature Coast, west of the county seat of Brooksville. Spring Hill has no traditional downtown; its schools, library branch, parks, and commercial strips are spread along arterial roads in a pattern built around driving. The community is growing steadily as a Tampa-area suburb, with new subdivisions continuing to come online and population rising over recent decades. Home values in the area currently sit below both the state and national midpoints, and they have edged slightly downward over the past year. Rents have held roughly flat. The monthly cost of ownership runs noticeably above renting at current mortgage rates, which is worth factoring in for families deciding whether to buy or rent near the school.
Westside serves prekindergarten through fifth grade. Because it stops at fifth grade, graduation rate is not applicable here, and the relevant state assessments begin in third grade, so prekindergarten and the first two grades are not tested.
On Florida's FAST assessments in the most recent school year, Westside's results tell a mixed story. Third-grade math proficiency is the strongest result, sitting at roughly two-thirds of students scoring proficient, which is a solid baseline. Fourth-grade math falls to a little over half, and fifth-grade math dips below half. Reading follows a similar arc: third-grade ELA comes in below half, fourth-grade ELA is just above half, and fifth-grade ELA drops back to about where third grade landed. Fifth-grade science sits between the math and ELA figures, with a bit more than half of students scoring proficient. Across all tested grades and subjects, the pattern is that results are modest to middling and tend to soften as students move through the upper elementary grades. A parent who wants to understand the trajectory more deeply, particularly the decline in fifth-grade math and the persistently lower ELA scores, would benefit from asking the school directly about how they approach intervention and enrichment in those grades.
The school enrolls a few hundred students across its grade span, a size that is fairly typical for an elementary school in its context. A large majority of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, which places this among higher-need elementary schools in terms of the economic circumstances families are navigating. The student body is predominantly white, with a meaningful Hispanic share and smaller Black and multiracial populations. IEP rates and English learner counts were not available in the data provided.
The comparison framework for Hernando County schools was not usable for positioning Westside against neighbors, because Hernando County effectively has one school district, making a within-county comparison of districts inapplicable. Trend data across years was also not available, so it is not possible from this data to say whether proficiency levels have been rising, falling, or holding steady.
Two district-level items are worth noting for families thinking about what the Hernando County school system can support. Voters approved a one-mill property tax in 2020 directed at teacher pay, school safety, mental health resources, and academic programs, and that millage was up for renewal on the November 2024 ballot. Separately, a half-cent sales tax for school construction and maintenance, originally passed by special election, also came up for renewal in 2024, with a new provision allowing funds to be used to build or expand schools in response to the county's population growth. Whether both measures passed was not confirmed in the data provided, but the existence of these voter-supported funding mechanisms reflects an ongoing community conversation about what the district needs to keep pace with Spring Hill's growth.
Program details specific to Westside were not available, so it is not possible to describe enrichment, intervention, or special programs the school may offer beyond what the state assessment results and demographics suggest.
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