The top reported proficiency rate is 64% in Math. The lowest is 61% in English language arts.
Original Research by School Decision on Garden Elementary School
Garden Elementary School sits on Center Road in Venice, a Gulf Coast city in Sarasota County with a compact Mediterranean Revival downtown, a walkable island core, and fast-expanding suburban growth to its south in the Wellen Park master-planned community. The school serves prekindergarten through fifth grade as a regular public school in the Sarasota County district.
Enrollment sits in a range that would be considered mid-sized for an elementary school. Roughly half the student population qualifies for free or reduced-price lunch, which means Garden serves a notably mixed economic cross-section for a coastal Florida community where home values remain well above the national median. The student body is predominantly white, with a meaningful share of Hispanic students, a smaller multiracial group, and modest representation of other racial and ethnic backgrounds. Data on English learners and students with IEPs was not available in what was provided here, so a parent interested in those support structures should ask the school directly.
On Florida's FAST assessments in the most recent school year, Garden's results are in a broadly solid range. Math proficiency across the tested grades runs from the upper fifties to the upper sixties, strongest in fourth grade and somewhat softer in fifth. ELA proficiency runs from the upper fifties to the mid-sixties, with third grade performing comparably to fifth and fourth grade a bit lower. Fifth-grade science proficiency landed in the mid-sixties. Taken together, roughly three in five to nearly seven in ten students are scoring at the proficient level depending on the grade and subject. That is a reasonable showing, though a meaningful share of students are not yet meeting proficiency benchmarks, particularly in fifth-grade math and fourth-grade ELA. A parent may want to ask the school what interventions or supports are in place for students who are working below grade level. No multi-year trend data was available, so it is not possible to say whether these results reflect improvement, stability, or decline over time.
Graduation rate data does not apply here because Garden stops at fifth grade.
The comparison set for Sarasota County contains only one district, so no meaningful peer comparison of proficiency or absenteeism results was available. Chronic absenteeism data for the school itself was also not in the data provided.
The district context around Garden is worth understanding. Sarasota County Schools renewed its supplemental property tax levy in late 2024, locking in a funding stream through 2030 that supports teacher recruitment and retention, arts, and career and technical education across the district. Separately, the district approved a plan in late 2025 to convert several elementary campuses to K-8 configurations and add STEAM and Cambridge programming at those sites. Garden Elementary is not named among the campuses being restructured, but the broader reorganization reshapes the district landscape, and families should confirm directly with the district whether any changes to attendance zones or program offerings are anticipated at Garden as part of that process.
On the housing side, the Venice zip code where Garden sits shows home values moderately above both the state and national medians, though values have pulled back noticeably over the past year. Rents have moved in the opposite direction, rising modestly over the same period, and the rent-to-income ratio sits at a level that signals real affordability pressure for renters. The estimated monthly carrying cost of a home at current values and rates is substantial. Families weighing whether to buy near Garden should factor in that the Venice market, while coastal and desirable, is in a period of price adjustment.
Venice itself offers a genuinely walkable downtown, trails connecting to a regional rail corridor, a Saturday farmers market, parks, and a beach at the end of the main avenue. Healthcare and manufacturing anchor the local economy, and growth in the surrounding area is brisk. Programs specific to Garden Elementary were not available in the data provided.
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