The top reported proficiency rate is 37% in Science. The lowest is 30% in English language arts.
Original Research by School Decision on Sunray Elementary School
Sunray Elementary sits on Sunray Drive in Holiday, Florida, a western Pasco County community that functions as a residential bedroom suburb oriented toward Tampa Bay employers. Holiday has no traditional downtown; it is car-dependent, built around commercial strips on US Highway 19, and its neighborhoods range from modest inland subdivisions to waterfront enclaves near the Gulf. The school itself is a regular public elementary serving prekindergarten through fifth grade within the Pasco County School District.
The enrollment picture reflects a school of moderate size for its grade band. A large majority of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, which signals a community with real economic pressure. The student body is racially mixed, with white and Hispanic students each making up substantial shares, Black students and students of two or more races each contributing meaningful portions, and smaller numbers of Asian and other students. Data on English learners and students with IEPs were not available in the data provided, so parents of children with those needs may want to ask the school directly about services.
On Florida's FAST assessments, proficiency rates at Sunray are low across all tested grades and subjects. In reading, the fourth-grade results are the softest, and no grade reaches even four in ten students scoring proficient. Math results follow a similar pattern across third through fifth grade, and the fifth-grade science assessment lands in a comparable range. The sixth-grade math figure was suppressed by the state, likely due to small group size. Trend data was not available, so it is not possible to say from this data whether performance has been moving in any direction. The comparison framework for Pasco County produced only one district in the county cohort, so a meaningful peer comparison was not possible. Parents who want context should ask the school about growth measures or improvement plans, since point-in-time proficiency rates in a high-poverty school tell only part of the story.
The district context matters for any family considering this part of Pasco County. In 2022, county voters approved a property-tax levy to boost salaries for teachers and non-administrative staff, and publicly reported figures show teacher vacancies dropped sharply in the years that followed. That levy runs through mid-2027, with a renewal expected on the November 2026 ballot, so it is worth watching as a factor in school staffing stability. Separately, a voter-approved one-cent sales tax renewed in 2022 channels capital funding to new construction, renovations, safety upgrades, and technology across the district. While much of the publicly visible new school construction is concentrated in the fast-growing east Pasco corridor around Wesley Chapel, the capital program covers the whole district.
The housing market in the Holiday zip code shows home values well below Florida's statewide median, which has made the area comparatively accessible for buyers, though values have dipped modestly in the past year. Rents have been essentially flat over the same period. Nationally, the area sits at a price-to-income ratio that is moderate but not cheap, and the rent-to-income burden is near the threshold that many financial planners consider stretched. Pasco County broadly is one of the faster-growing counties in the country, and while that growth is more concentrated in eastern Pasco, it carries countywide implications for school capacity and boundary decisions. Families moving to western Pasco for its lower cost of entry should be aware that the district has been actively redrawing attendance zones in growth areas and may continue to do so.
Holiday itself offers the Centennial Park Branch Library on Moog Road, which was remodeled and reopened in 2021, as a local civic resource. The community is genuinely car-dependent; pedestrian infrastructure along US 19 has historically been inadequate, and safety improvements along that corridor remain a work in progress publicly reported by FDOT. Program-specific offerings at Sunray were not available in the data, so a parent wanting to know about enrichment, intervention tiers, or extracurricular options should contact the school directly.
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