The top reported proficiency rate is 56% in English language arts. The lowest is 47% in Math.
Original Research by School Decision on Bok Academy
Bok Academy is a public charter middle school in Lake Wales, Florida, serving grades six through eight. It sits on the US Highway 27 corridor on the shores of Crooked Lake, physically separate from the city's compact historic downtown. As a charter school, it operates within the Lake Wales Charter Schools organization, which is one of the larger employers in the area and runs several campuses serving Lake Wales and surrounding communities.
The school draws a mixed student body. White students make up roughly half of enrollment, Hispanic students just over a quarter, and Black students roughly a sixth, with smaller shares of other groups. This is a racially and ethnically diverse peer environment by middle school standards. A substantial majority of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, which signals a predominantly lower-income population. Data on English learners and students with IEPs were not available in what was provided.
On Florida's FAST assessments, the academic picture is mixed and worth looking at grade by grade. In ELA, proficiency rates across all three grade levels cluster in a moderate range, with sixth and eighth graders performing comparably and seventh grade running somewhat lower. Math tells a more varied story: eighth graders score meaningfully above sixth graders, while seventh grade math proficiency is the weakest of the three years by a visible margin. The eighth-grade science assessment shows roughly half of students reaching proficiency. No multi-year trend data was available, so it is not possible to say from this data whether performance has been improving, declining, or holding steady. A parent who wants to understand whether the school is gaining ground would want to ask the school directly for that trajectory.
Because the comparison set for Polk County contained only two districts, a formal peer comparison was not computed. State-level context is what's available here, and the numbers position the school in a middle range on Florida's assessments rather than at either end.
The school serves only middle grades, so there is no graduation rate, and no AP or dual-enrollment data applies.
The neighborhood context matters for families thinking about where to live. Lake Wales is in an active growth phase. Publicly reported data shows home-building permits rising sharply in recent years, with a large number of residential units in various stages of city approval across dozens of projects, much of it in the city's southern and eastern sections. Home values in the area sit noticeably below the Florida state median and below the national median, and the price-to-income ratio is relatively modest, making it one of the more accessible housing markets in the state at the moment, though values have edged down slightly over the past year. Rental cost data was not available for this zip code.
The city itself is organized around a historic downtown with a pedestrian-oriented mixed-use core, a Saturday farmers market, and ongoing streetscape investment. A federally funded complete-streets project is remaking several downtown corridors with wider sidewalks, a cycle track, and shade trees. Florida's Natural Growers, the largest citrus cooperative in Florida, is headquartered along the Highway 27 corridor and is a major local employer. Warner University and Bok Tower Gardens are also part of the civic fabric. Public transit service exists but is limited.
For a parent choosing between Bok Academy and other options in Lake Wales, the key questions are how it performs relative to the district-run alternative and whether the charter school structure and culture are a fit. The academic data shows a school where most students are reaching proficiency in ELA but where math results, particularly in seventh grade, suggest this is an area to probe. The school's trend over time and its approach to supporting students who are below grade level were not captured in the available data, and those would be worth exploring directly with the school.
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