The top reported proficiency rate is 58% in Math. The lowest is 38% in English language arts.
Original Research by School Decision on H. S. Moody Elementary School
H. S. Moody Elementary sits on the west side of Bradenton, serving pre-kindergarten through fifth grade as a regular public school in the Manatee County School District. Enrollment puts it in a mid-range size for an elementary school in its grade band. A substantial share of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, reflecting a community with real economic need. Hispanic students make up the largest share of enrollment, followed by white and Black students, with smaller numbers of students identifying as two or more races. Data on English learners and students with IEPs was not available in the records we reviewed, so a parent wanting to understand support services in those areas should ask the school directly.
On state assessments, Moody's results are below the middle of Florida's range in the tested grades. FAST Math proficiency in grades three through five runs in roughly the mid-forties range each year, and FAST ELA proficiency ranges from the low-to-mid thirties in third grade to the low-forties in fourth, dropping back into the upper thirties in fifth. Fifth-grade science proficiency on Florida's statewide assessment lands in roughly the same zone. These results are consistent across the tested grades, and parents who want to understand whether their child would be well-served should ask Moody specifically about its intervention programs, reading supports, and how teachers track individual progress. A reported sixth-grade math data point shows a dramatically different result, but given that Moody serves only through fifth grade, that figure almost certainly reflects a very small number of students in an unusual circumstance and should not be read as a typical school result.
Trend data is not available in the current records, so there is no basis to say whether results have been improving, holding steady, or declining. That is a meaningful gap, and a family weighing this school should ask for the school's trajectory over recent years.
The broader district context matters here. Manatee County voters publicly renewed a one-mill property tax referendum in late 2024, a decision that preserves funding for teacher salary supplements, STEM, career and technical programs, arts, athletics, early literacy, and school safety. That money flows to elementary schools as well as secondary ones. The district has also installed AI-assisted weapon-detection systems at its secondary campuses, backed by security staffing at after-school events. Neither applies directly to Moody's elementary campus, but the district's overall investment posture shapes what resources eventually reach every school.
The district is growing fast enough that it recently redrew elementary and middle school attendance zones. Families new to the area should confirm which school their specific address now maps to, since the new zone maps took effect and some assignments changed.
The neighborhood around Moody, on the west side of Bradenton, sits in a housing market that has softened somewhat from its recent peak. Home values in the zip code are modestly above the statewide median but have declined year over year, and rents have come down as well, with rent running meaningfully below what a typical mortgage payment would cost on a comparable property. For a family weighing whether to rent or buy near this school, the rent-versus-own math in this zip code currently favors renting on a monthly-payment basis, though mortgage rates remain elevated.
Bradenton itself is the county seat of Manatee County, with a compact downtown along the Manatee River that includes the Riverwalk, the Bishop Museum of Science and Nature, ArtCenter Manatee, and the Manatee Performing Arts Center. The Village of the Arts district, a walkable stretch of early-twentieth-century bungalows repurposed for galleries and studios, gives the city a distinctive neighborhood character uncommon in this part of Florida. Major employers publicly reported in the area include the school district itself, Manatee Memorial Hospital, Tropicana's main production facility, and the IMG sports academy. The city is growing, with new apartment construction running at a high clip across the broader metro and new retail anchors arriving in outlying corridors.
For a family whose child needs strong academic scaffolding in reading and math, the assessment picture at Moody is something to probe carefully with the school before enrolling, not a reason to dismiss the school, but a clear prompt to ask what supports are in place.
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