The top reported proficiency rate is 56% in Math. The lowest is 42% in English language arts.
Original Research by School Decision on Lealman Avenue Elementary School
Lealman Avenue Elementary sits on a residential stretch of north St. Petersburg, serving children from pre-kindergarten through fifth grade. The school is part of Pinellas County Schools, a large urban district that publicly reported earning its first-ever top state grade in 2024, a milestone tied to a district-wide curriculum overhaul. Understanding how those broader trends play out at the school level is a reasonable question for any family considering enrollment here.
The school enrolls a modest-to-mid-sized population for its grade band, spread fairly evenly across the grades. The student body is racially mixed, with Black, Hispanic, and white students each representing a substantial share of enrollment, and Asian and multiracial students adding to the mix. A large majority of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, which places the school firmly in the higher-economic-need tier of Pinellas schools. Data on English-learner and special education populations were not available in the records reviewed.
On Florida's statewide assessments, the picture is mixed. Math proficiency across grades three through five sits in the mid-to-upper range for the school, with fifth graders performing at roughly similar levels to third graders, and fourth grade coming in slightly higher than third. That pattern is reasonably solid. Reading is the sharper concern: ELA proficiency rates across the same grade span are meaningfully lower, with fewer than half of students in each tested grade reaching the proficient threshold, and fourth and fifth grades sitting at the lower end of that range. Fifth-grade science proficiency comes in just above half of tested students. Multi-year trend data was not available, so whether these figures represent improvement, decline, or a plateau cannot be assessed from what was provided. A parent would reasonably want to ask the school directly about trajectory and what early-literacy supports are in place, particularly given the district's stated push on a science-of-reading approach beginning in kindergarten.
The school carries no magnet designation and is listed as a regular public school. Title I status was not reported in the data available here. Discipline, attendance, and staffing data were also not available.
The surrounding neighborhood is part of St. Petersburg's broader inland residential fabric, north of the downtown core. The city itself is in a sustained growth period, with a wave of development concentrated downtown and now spreading outward. Housing near the school's zip code has seen home values soften over the past year, falling noticeably below the statewide median for Florida, and rents in the area sit below the county's more expensive coastal zones. Estimated monthly ownership costs, relative to area incomes, suggest this part of the city remains more accessible than the waterfront neighborhoods commanding premium prices. Renters here spend a meaningful share of income on housing but are not in the most pressured tier of the local market.
For families weighing the school's proximity to the broader city, St. Petersburg offers a well-developed public transit network including the SunRunner bus rapid transit line, a walkable and culturally active downtown with waterfront parks, a public library system with multiple branches, and major employers spanning finance, health care, and technology. The city is actively expanding affordable housing, which shapes the residential character of inland neighborhoods like the one Lealman Avenue Elementary serves.
The district-level changes are worth tracking for any Pinellas family. Voters in late 2024 approved a renewal and expansion of the local school property tax, raising it for a multi-year period; the funds support teacher and staff compensation alongside reading, arts, music, and technology programming. That levy directly affects homebuyer costs and, on the other side, stabilizes the staffing and programs families depend on. The district also rolled out a custom ELA curriculum built on structured literacy principles, which is the pedagogical frame behind its improved state standing. How fully that curriculum has translated into outcomes at Lealman is a question the school-level reading data raises, and one a prospective parent may want to explore directly with the school.
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