The top reported proficiency rate is 45% in Math. The lowest is 43% in English language arts.
Original Research by School Decision on Cork Elementary School
Cork Elementary sits on North Cork Road in Plant City, a mid-sized agricultural city on the I-4 corridor roughly midway between Tampa and Lakeland. The school serves prekindergarten through fifth grade as a regular public elementary within Hillsborough County Schools. Its enrollment is on the larger end for an elementary serving this grade band in the county.
The student body is majority Hispanic, with white students making up a substantial second group and smaller shares of Black, Asian, and multiracial students. A clear majority of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, which means many families here are navigating modest household budgets. Data on English learners and students with IEPs was not available in what we reviewed, so parents with children in those categories may want to ask the school directly about its support services.
Florida's FAST assessments, administered in grades three through five, are the primary academic window here. In reading and math, third and fourth grade results fall below the majority-proficient mark in both subjects, with fourth-grade math showing the softest numbers across all grades tested. Fifth grade is noticeably stronger: a majority of fifth graders reached proficiency in ELA, and an outright majority did in math as well. Fifth-grade science, assessed once through the Florida Statewide Science Assessment, sits just under the midpoint. The pattern suggests meaningful variability by grade cohort rather than uniform performance across the school. A parent of a child entering third or fourth grade may want to ask school staff about the specific supports in place for those grade levels. Multi-year trend data was not available, so it is not possible to say from these results alone whether the school is moving in a particular direction.
A comparison against other districts in Hillsborough County was not applicable here, as there is effectively only one public school district in the county, which is the parent district for Cork. The school does not have its own graduation rate, as it stops at fifth grade.
On the community side, Plant City is growing actively. Publicly reported information describes a city that has grown considerably over the past decade and is updating its comprehensive plan to manage new housing, land use, and mobility pressures. New single-family subdivisions are being delivered by multiple builders, with homes across a range of sizes marketed partly on easy highway access to Tampa, Lakeland, and Orlando. Home values in Cork's ZIP code run modestly above both the statewide and national medians at current readings, with modest year-over-year softening, and the estimated monthly ownership cost at current mortgage rates represents a meaningful share of the national median household income. Rental data for the immediate ZIP was not available in what we reviewed.
Two district-level changes matter for families considering Cork. Hillsborough County Schools went through a major boundary rezoning that took effect for the 2024-25 school year, shifting attendance lines for a large number of schools across the county. Families should confirm Cork is currently the assigned school for their address rather than assuming prior boundaries still hold. Separately, county voters approved a one-mill property tax referendum in late 2024, running through mid-2029, that will raise annual property tax costs for homeowners in exchange for a structured pay supplement for teachers and support staff. That is a real annual cost increase families buying into the attendance zone should factor in alongside mortgage estimates.
Plant City itself offers a walkable historic downtown with McCall Park, monthly food truck events, and a municipal library. Major employment is anchored by South Florida Baptist Hospital, regional produce and wholesale operations, and distribution centers for large national firms. The city's agricultural identity runs deep, from its strawberry production to an agricultural robotics company headquartered there.
Programs data for Cork Elementary was not available in what we reviewed, so details on enrichment, intervention, or specialty tracks are a question worth raising directly with the school.
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