The top reported proficiency rate is 75% in Math. The lowest is 69% in English language arts.
Original Research by School Decision on Leila Davis Elementary School
Leila Davis Elementary sits at the northern end of Clearwater, a Pinellas County city whose character ranges from an active, redeveloping downtown waterfront core to car-oriented suburban neighborhoods stretching out along arterials like US 19. The school's address on Landmark Drive places it in a quieter residential corridor, well away from the commercial activity of Gulf to Bay Boulevard or the beach communities to the west. Clearwater itself is going through a pronounced construction phase downtown, with a new city hall, a major mixed-use residential tower, a waterfront hotel, and a transit station all either underway or recently completed, but that activity is unlikely to directly touch the day-to-day experience of a family in this part of the city.
The school serves prekindergarten through fifth grade, a size that is solid for an elementary in its setting. A little over a third of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, which places it in a noticeably less economically stressed position than many Florida public elementaries. The student body is predominantly white, with Hispanic students making up roughly a fifth of enrollment, smaller shares of Black and multiracial students, and a very small Asian population. IEP and English learner data were not available in what was provided.
On the most recent Florida FAST assessments, Leila Davis turns in genuinely strong numbers. In third and fourth grade math, the share of students scoring proficient is well above what most Florida schools report, with fourth grade math standing out as particularly high. Third grade ELA is solid, and fourth grade ELA is strong. Fifth grade performance in both math and ELA dips somewhat compared to the earlier grades, a pattern worth asking the school about directly, though the fifth grade science result is back up in strong territory. The comparison framework provided could not be used to position the school against other Pinellas County schools directly, since there is only one district in Pinellas, so these results are contextualized against Florida as a whole. Across all the tested grades and subjects, the school generally performs above the middle of the state distribution. Trend data across multiple years was not available in what was provided.
Two district-level developments are relevant for any family weighing this school. Pinellas County Schools publicly reported earning its first-ever A grade from the Florida Department of Education in 2024, coinciding with the rollout of a custom science-of-reading curriculum built to Florida's B.E.S.T. standards and starting in the early grades. For a family enrolling a kindergartner or first grader, that early-literacy approach is already in place. The district also went to voters in late 2024 and won approval to renew and expand a local-option school property tax, doubling the rate for a multi-year term. The funds go toward teacher and support-staff bonuses and toward reading, music, art, and technology programs. For a prospective homebuyer in Clearwater, this is a lasting cost to factor in, and for a family already planning to enroll, it represents a stabilizing investment in the programs and staffing that show up in classrooms.
On the housing side, home values in the zip code have come down meaningfully over the past year and now sit below both the Florida statewide benchmark and the national one. Rents have ticked up slightly over the same period. The estimated monthly mortgage at current rates, with a standard down payment, runs somewhat above the typical rent, though not by a wide margin, making the rent-versus-buy calculation relatively close. Nationwide, the price-to-income ratio in this zip code is above the midpoint of affordability benchmarks, so housing costs here are not cheap, but the recent price decline may matter to buyers who were priced out a year or two ago.
Program information for the school was not in the data provided, so the breadth of enrichment offerings, any special instructional programs, or extracurricular options would need to be confirmed directly with the school or the Pinellas County Schools website.
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