The top reported proficiency rate is 78% in English language arts. The lowest is 65% in Science.
Original Research by School Decision on Kings Highway Elementary Magnet School
Kings Highway Elementary Magnet School sits on Kings Highway in Clearwater, a mid-sized Pinellas County city with a compact downtown core, beach communities, and residential neighborhoods spreading out from arterials like US 19 and Gulf to Bay Boulevard. The school serves prekindergarten through fifth grade within Pinellas County Schools, a district that publicly reported earning an "A" grade from the Florida Department of Education for the first time in district history, tied to a custom core ELA curriculum built around the science of reading and aligned to Florida's B.E.S.T. standards. That literacy shift is now embedded in early grades across the district, which bears directly on what families can expect in a school like this one.
The enrollment is small for its grade band, and a large majority of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. The school serves a predominantly Black student population, with Hispanic and multiracial students making up most of the remaining enrollment, and white and Asian students present in smaller shares. The data does not include IEP or English learner rates, so families with children in those groups would want to ask the school directly about services.
Academic results from Florida's FAST assessments in the 2024-25 school year are mixed and worth examining by grade rather than as a single picture. In fourth grade, proficiency in both ELA and math was strikingly strong, with nearly all tested students reaching the proficiency bar in reading and a very high share in math. Third grade math came in well below that, and fifth grade performance in both ELA and math was moderate. Science at fifth grade was also moderate. Because trend data was not available, it is not clear whether these results reflect a consistent pattern or a year-to-year shift. A parent would reasonably want to ask the school about how it supports students across grades, especially given the variation between fourth grade and the other tested years.
No program offerings data was provided, so the school's magnet theme and any specialized curriculum or enrichment pathways could not be described here. Families should check directly with the school or with Pinellas County Schools' magnet office to understand what the school's focus area is, whether there are enrollment preferences or a lottery, and what distinguishes it from a neighborhood assignment school.
Clearwater itself is in the middle of a significant downtown redevelopment cycle. The waterfront Coachman Park reopened in 2023 and now anchors civic life with green space, a splash pad, and a covered amphitheater programmed by Ruth Eckerd Hall. A wave of new construction is underway downtown, including a new City Hall, a waterfront hotel, and a tall mixed-use apartment tower on the former City Hall site, with completion targeted in the next few years. Transit is handled by PSTA, with a new Clearwater Station replacing the Park Street Terminal, expected to open in 2027. The local economy draws on IT distribution, aerospace and defense manufacturing, and financial and professional services.
The housing market around the school carries values modestly below the Florida state median and slightly below national medians, with both home values and rents drifting downward over the past year. Rents sit at a level where the monthly cost consumes a meaningful share of median income, and mortgage costs are close enough to renting that the gap is narrow, though still present. Buyers should factor in that Pinellas County voters renewed and expanded the local school property tax in November 2024, doubling the rate for a multi-year period. Those funds support teacher and staff bonuses and programs in reading, music, art, and technology, and would show up in an annual property tax bill.
Meaningful gaps remain in this profile: no attendance data, no discipline data, no staffing data, and no comparative proficiency positioning relative to other Pinellas County schools was available given the comparison universe. What the data does show is a school with genuinely strong fourth-grade outcomes, a district-level literacy investment that is still maturing, and a community in active physical transformation around it.
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