The top reported proficiency rate is 41% in Science. The lowest is 25% in Math.
Original Research by School Decision on Sheehy Elementary School
Sheehy Elementary is a pre-kindergarten through fifth grade public school in Tampa, sitting on North 40th Street in a residential area of east Tampa, part of the Hillsborough County school district. The enrollment is modest for a full elementary school, and the student body is predominantly Black, with a smaller Hispanic population and very few students of other backgrounds. A large majority of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, placing this among schools serving a high-poverty population. Data on English learners and students with IEPs was not available in the records reviewed.
State testing results from Florida's FAST assessment paint a clear picture of academic challenge. In reading and language arts, proficiency across the tested grades runs well below what a parent might see at a typical Florida elementary school, with the highest reading rate in third grade and somewhat lower rates in fourth and fifth. Math results follow a similar pattern, with third grade showing the lowest proficiency of any tested grade and fifth grade somewhat higher, though still well below the state midpoint. The fifth-grade science assessment result is the strongest subject showing here, sitting noticeably above the ELA and lower math results, though still modest in absolute terms. Multi-year trend data was not available, so whether these results reflect improvement, decline, or stability over time cannot be assessed from the current data. A parent would want to ask the school directly about how academic supports are structured, what interventions exist for students reading and computing below grade level, and how progress is tracked year to year.
No information was available on program offerings, staffing ratios, attendance rates, or chronic absenteeism. Civil rights and discipline data were also absent from the records provided.
Because Hillsborough County has only one district in the comparison set, a meaningful position ranking against neighboring districts is not possible with the data at hand.
The surrounding neighborhood sits in a part of Tampa that is distinct from the city's more visible commercial and cultural corridors. Publicly reported information describes Tampa broadly as a city of varied neighborhoods, from downtown's financial district and the historic streets of Ybor City and Hyde Park to the waterfront parks and transit networks that serve the urban core. The North 40th Street area is not among the neighborhoods highlighted for walkability or amenity density in publicly available accounts of Tampa's neighborhoods. The local housing market shows home values sitting meaningfully below both the Florida statewide median and the national median, and both sale prices and rents have moved slightly downward over the past year. For a family comparing housing costs, this part of Tampa is considerably more accessible than many other parts of the metro.
Two district-level developments from Hillsborough County Schools are worth knowing. Voters approved a property tax referendum in late 2024, effective through 2029, that adds to annual homeowner costs and is directed toward teacher and staff pay increases. Separately, the district undertook a major boundary rezoning for the 2024-25 school year that rerouted a substantial number of students across many schools. Families should confirm their current boundary assignment directly with the district, as assigned schools may differ from prior years.
Sheehy serves a community with real economic pressures, and the academic data reflects that context. Families weighing this school should go in with clear questions about instructional support structures and ask what the school is doing concretely to close the gap between current proficiency and grade-level expectations.
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