Melaleuca Elementary School, West Palm Beach FL

Original Research by School Decision on Melaleuca Elementary School

Melaleuca Elementary sits on Gun Club Road in the western residential belt of West Palm Beach, part of the countywide Palm Beach County School District. It serves kindergarten through fifth grade as a conventional public elementary school, drawing a student body that is predominantly Hispanic, with Black students making up the next largest share and a smaller white enrollment. A substantial majority of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, which places this school firmly in the higher-need tier of its district. Data on English learner enrollment and students with IEPs were not available in the records provided.

On Florida's FAST assessments for the most recent school year, the academic picture is uneven and, in several grades, genuinely concerning. Third-grade math is the strongest result, with a majority of students reaching proficiency. In fourth and fifth grade, both math and ELA proficiency rates fall to roughly a third or fewer of tested students. Fifth-grade science is lower still, with fewer than a third reaching proficiency. There is a sixth-grade math data point showing full proficiency, but given that this is a K-5 school, that figure almost certainly reflects a very small number of students, possibly a single tested student or a tiny group, so it should not be read as representative of overall math performance. Parents should weigh that context carefully. Taken together, the school's overall proficiency index places it in the bottom quartile relative to districts in Palm Beach County. Multi-year trend data was not available, so it is not possible to say from the data whether performance has been improving or holding steady. A parent who wants to understand the school's trajectory would need to ask directly.

The enrollment is mid-sized for an elementary school, spread fairly evenly across grade levels from kindergarten through fifth. Class sizes and staffing ratios were not reported in the data provided.

The neighborhood around Gun Club Road is a working residential area of West Palm Beach, distinct in character from the downtown core that has drawn so much attention and investment. The walkable Clematis Street corridor, the Brightline station, and the luxury waterfront towers currently reshaping the Flagler Drive skyline are real features of the broader city, but they sit well east of this school's location. The housing market in the school's zip code shows values meaningfully below the Florida state benchmark and below the national median, and year-over-year values in this zip have edged down slightly. Rents, while also below the state benchmark, still consume a large share of a typical household's income at current market rates, which reflects the broader affordability strain that West Palm Beach shares with much of South Florida. The city's overall development boom has brought rising costs and congestion that residents across the city are navigating.

For families choosing this school, the core question the data raises is academic support. With proficiency rates for fourth and fifth graders running well below state and county norms in both reading and math, a parent would reasonably want to ask the school what intervention structures are in place, how students who are behind grade level are identified and served, and what the school's own read is on recent progress. Program offerings beyond the standard curriculum were not reported in the data available, so that question too is worth putting to the school directly. District-level strategic priorities and recent changes were not surfaced in the research conducted.

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Academic performance

How students perform on state tests, by grade, set against the district.

Math

Grade 360%

School 60% · District 64% · ▼ 4 pts below district

▼ 3 pts below state median · even with county median

Grade 434%

School 34% · District 55% · ▼ 21 pts below district

▼ 27 pts below state median · ▼ 18 pts below county median

Grade 537%

School 37% · District 59% · ▼ 22 pts below district

▼ 18 pts below state median · ▼ 19 pts below county median

Grade 6100%

School 100% · District 65% · ▲ 35 pts above district

▲ 38 pts above state median · ▲ 6 pts above county median

English language arts

Grade 347%

School 47% · District 57% · ▼ 9 pts below district

▼ 9 pts below state median · ▼ 3 pts below county median

Grade 433%

School 33% · District 56% · ▼ 23 pts below district

▼ 21 pts below state median · ▼ 19 pts below county median

Grade 533%

School 33% · District 56% · ▼ 23 pts below district

▼ 21 pts below state median · ▼ 21 pts below county median

Science

Grade 530%

School 30% · District 54% · ▼ 24 pts below district

▼ 23 pts below state median · ▼ 19 pts below county median

This schoolPALM BEACH, same grade

Graduation rate (ACGR) reflects the federally published Adjusted Cohort Graduation Rate for the most recent year available. We refresh this data annually at the close of each academic year in June. The federal source publishes a banded rate (for example, "90-94%") instead of an exact number for cohorts small enough to risk identifying individual students. The state distribution chart, where shown, plots every school in the state with a published rate or band; schools whose rate is federally suppressed are excluded. Where the federal source publishes a band rather than an exact rate, the school is placed within its band using a stable, ID-derived offset, so its position is consistent across visits.

Proficiency by household income

English language arts

Grade 3Lower-income47%Higher-income45%2 pp gap

Grade 4Lower-income37%Higher-income26%10 pp gap

Grade 5Lower-income32%Higher-income35%3 pp gap

Mathematics

Grade 3Lower-income58%Higher-income69%11 pp gap

Grade 4Lower-income35%Higher-income32%3 pp gap

Grade 5Lower-income37%Higher-income38%1 pp gap