The top reported proficiency rate is 55% in Math. The lowest is 35% in Science.
Original Research by School Decision on Everglades Elementary School
Everglades Elementary sits on the southeast side of the city of Okeechobee, serving children from pre-kindergarten through fifth grade. It is a regular public school in the Okeechobee County School District, drawing from a community whose character is shaped as much by cattle ranching and the nearness of the lake as by any suburban texture. The town is small and agricultural in feel, with a walkable downtown along Park Street anchored by Flagler Park, locally owned restaurants and shops, and year-round community festivals. Outside that compact core, the broader area is auto-oriented, and families mostly drive to schools and services.
The school's enrollment is healthy for its grade band, spread fairly evenly across the grades with a meaningful pre-K cohort as well. The student body is roughly split between students identifying as white and students identifying as Hispanic, with smaller shares of Black, multiracial, and other students. A substantial majority of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, reflecting the economic profile of the surrounding area where agriculture, government, healthcare, and retail are among the primary sources of employment. Data on English learner enrollment and students receiving special education services were not available in the data provided, so parents interested in those programs should ask the school directly.
On Florida's FAST assessments, math proficiency across the tested grades sits in the mid-fifties range, meaning roughly half of students score at the proficient level, with fifth grade coming in slightly stronger than third and fourth. Reading results are lower: third and fourth grade ELA proficiency lands in the mid-forties, and fifth grade ELA and fifth grade science both sit in the mid-thirties. These are below where most families would hope to see a school land, and they are worth a direct conversation with the school about what supports are in place, what interventions are used, and how results are trending. Year-over-year trend data was not available in the data provided, so it is not possible from these figures alone to say whether performance is improving, stable, or declining. Because Okeechobee County has only a single school district, a same-county comparison to other districts was not applicable.
The county-level housing market offers home values meaningfully below the Florida state median, and the local market has been essentially flat over the past year. Renter cost data was not available for this specific area. For a family weighing a move, the relative affordability compared to Florida broadly is a real distinction, though mortgage and financing conditions remain the same as anywhere in the state.
At the district level, there is one concrete change underway that matters to families with young children today. A new Okeechobee High School is on track to open for the 2026-27 school year, and the reorganization coming with it will expand pre-kindergarten capacity substantially by converting the former freshman campus into an early learning center. That means families with children now in the early elementary grades at Everglades can expect greater pre-K access to be available to younger siblings, and the high school that students from this school would eventually reach will be a newly built campus with all grades, including ninth, housed together rather than separately. That consolidation ends a longstanding split that has separated freshmen from upperclassmen.
Program-specific information for Everglades Elementary itself was not available in the data provided, so details about enrichment, specials, after-school programming, or any distinctive instructional approach would need to come from the school directly.
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