The top reported proficiency rate is 29% in English language arts. The lowest is 25% in Science.
Original Research by School Decision on Shelley S. Boone Middle School
Shelley S. Boone Middle School sits on the south side of Haines City, a Polk County city that has been growing rapidly, drawing new families with relatively affordable housing prices that sit below both the state and national medians. The surrounding area mixes a walkable historic downtown with sprawling newer subdivisions along the I-4 and US-27 corridors, and the school's location on 22nd Street South places it in the older residential core of the city. Home values in the zip code have edged down slightly year over year, while rents have ticked up modestly, a pattern worth watching for families weighing buying versus renting. The city's employment base spans retail, construction, health care, and a growing logistics presence anchored by distribution operations.
The school serves sixth through eighth graders and carries a large enrollment for a middle school of its grade band. The student body is predominantly Hispanic, with Black students making up a smaller but substantial share and white students a smaller one still. A large majority of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, which means this is a school serving a high proportion of economically disadvantaged families. Data on English learner counts and students with individualized education programs was not available in the materials reviewed.
State assessment results from the most recent testing cycle present a clear challenge. On Florida's FAST assessments, math proficiency rates range from low to very low across sixth, seventh, and eighth grades, with seventh grade showing the weakest result of the three. Reading and ELA proficiency follows a similar pattern across all three grades, with scores in the upper twenties to low thirties at most. The eighth-grade science assessment result falls in the same general range as the ELA scores. Across every tested subject and grade level, fewer than half of students are reaching proficiency, and in several cases the share is well below that threshold. These are not figures a parent should dismiss, and it would be worth asking the school directly about what academic intervention structures are in place, how students who are behind are identified and supported, and what the school's own trajectory looks like year over year. Multi-year trend data was not available, so there is no way to tell from this data alone whether results are improving, holding, or declining.
No program offerings were included in the data provided, so whether the school offers accelerated coursework, electives, arts, or extracurriculars in any particular depth is not something that can be addressed here. A parent would want to ask the school specifically about those pathways. The district brief for Polk County Public Schools returned no confirmed recent parent-relevant changes before the research was complete, so district-level context on staffing, priorities, or initiatives was left out rather than guessed at.
The comparison data for Polk County covers only two districts, which is too small a set to make meaningful relative positioning useful. The chronic absenteeism rate and graduation rate comparisons were not applicable at the school level from this data.
Haines City itself is a place in motion. It is publicly reported to be among Polk County's fastest-growing cities, with new residential developments on the outskirts alongside an older, denser neighborhood fabric near downtown. The Lake Eva Park complex offers a genuine civic gathering point with sports courts, an aquatic center, and event space. Transit connections run to Winter Haven, Lake Wales, Davenport, and toward Poinciana, giving car-free residents some regional mobility. The ALDI distribution expansion is publicly reported to be bringing new jobs, and the city's economic development council points to infrastructure investment as a driver of continued growth.
For a family enrolling a sixth, seventh, or eighth grader, the honest picture here is a school in a community with real momentum and affordability, set against academic proficiency results that are well below state norms across all tested areas. That gap is worth taking seriously and investigating further with the school before drawing conclusions about what it means for any individual child.
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