The top reported proficiency rate is 58% in Math. The lowest is 48% in Science.
Original Research by School Decision on Stanley Switlik Elementary School
Stanley Switlik Elementary sits on the Overseas Highway in Marathon, a small island city roughly midway along the Florida Keys chain. The school serves children from pre-kindergarten through fifth grade, and its address on U.S. 1 places it squarely in the commercial and residential corridor that defines daily life in this water-oriented community. For families arriving from the mainland, Marathon offers a genuine small-town feel with fishing, boating, and hospitality at its core, but the housing market here is deeply unlike most of Florida. Home values run far above both the state and national medians, well above the statewide midpoint, and rents follow the same pattern. Publicly reported data indicates that cost of living in Marathon runs well above the national average. A family buying here should also know that the Monroe County School District adopted a property tax increase for the 2025-26 fiscal year, directed toward capital projects including new construction, safety improvements, and renovations. That is a concrete cost consideration for homebuyers.
The school enrolls a moderately sized student body for a PK-5 campus. The student population is majority Hispanic, with a substantial white minority and smaller shares of other groups. A large majority of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, indicating that a significant portion of the families Switlik serves are working-class households. Those households face the same housing pressures the city is actively trying to address: Marathon's city government has in recent years moved to expand workforce-affordable housing allocations, remove cumulative permit caps, and enable a Habitat for Humanity townhome development, all publicly reported signals that affordability is a real and unresolved strain in this community.
On academic performance, Switlik's results on Florida's FAST assessments tell a mixed story. Third-grade math is the clearest relative bright spot, with most students in that grade testing proficient. Fourth and fifth grade math proficiency drops somewhat. Reading proficiency in ELA runs lower across all three tested grades, with fewer than half of fourth and fifth graders scoring proficient. Fifth-grade science results land at roughly the same level as ELA. Trend data was not available in the underlying data, so it is not possible to say from this profile whether these numbers are improving, holding, or declining. Parents who want to understand the direction of the school's academic trajectory would be well advised to ask the school directly. IEP and English learner population data were not available in the data provided, so the scope of specialized support services cannot be characterized from this profile alone.
The Monroe County comparison set for academic metrics contains only one district, which means no meaningful county-level peer comparison is possible for this school.
On the district side, Marathon voters in November 2024 renewed two longstanding school funding referendums, preserving a millage that supports teacher salaries, a school nurse, and a school resource officer at every school, along with a half-cent sales tax for facilities and maintenance. District leaders had previously warned that a failed vote would have forced staff reductions and larger class sizes, so the renewal matters to families with children in the system now.
Program offerings beyond the core curriculum were not available in the data provided. Discipline, attendance, and staffing detail were also absent, leaving gaps a parent would want to fill through a school visit or direct conversation.
What Switlik is, plainly, is the neighborhood elementary school for a genuinely unusual American community: a small island city where working families exist alongside a significant tourism economy, housing is expensive by almost any measure, and the school building itself sits on the same road that carries fishing boats to marinas and tourists to resorts. Families drawn to the Keys lifestyle, comfortable with a compact school community and a demographically diverse student body, and prepared for a housing market with few easy entry points will find this school embedded in exactly that context.
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