The top reported proficiency rate is 90% in Science. The lowest is 76% in Math.
Original Research by School Decision on Goldsboro Elementary Magnet
Goldsboro Elementary Magnet sits on West 20th Street in Sanford, a city in Seminole County whose identity blends a preserved late-1800s downtown commercial core with rapid residential expansion on its edges. The school is a public magnet within Seminole County Public Schools, serving prekindergarten through fifth grade. Its enrollment is large for an elementary school, spread fairly evenly across grade levels from kindergarten through fifth grade with a smaller pre-K cohort.
The school's demographic profile is genuinely distinctive. Asian students make up the plurality of the enrollment, followed by Black, Hispanic, and white students in roughly similar shares, with smaller multiracial and other populations. This is an unusually diverse peer composition by any measure, and it reflects the magnet draw that pulls families from across a county that is itself ethnically varied. About a third of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, a moderate economic mix. Data on students with IEPs and English learners was not available in what was provided.
On the most recent Florida FAST assessments, the school's results are strong across most tested grades. In ELA, proficiency rates in grades three through five are all solidly above the majority threshold, with fourth and fifth graders performing especially well. Math results are more varied: fourth graders show high proficiency, third graders are also above the midpoint, and fifth graders come in somewhat lower, a pattern worth asking the school about directly. A small sixth-grade cohort reported in the math data shows all students proficient, though this likely reflects a very small group rather than a systemic result. The fifth-grade science assessment result stands out as a genuine strength, with nearly all tested students scoring proficient. No multi-year trend data was available, so it is not possible to say whether these results represent improvement, stability, or a shift from prior years.
The school's extracurricular program is unusually rich for an elementary setting. Publicly reported offerings include a Lego Robotics and Robotics program, Chess and Math clubs, a Chinese Club and an American Sign Language Club, Creative Writing, Film, Art, and a Student Council. This breadth suggests an intentional culture of intellectual engagement beyond the core classroom, which families choosing a magnet school often weigh heavily.
District context shapes a few practical day-to-day realities. Seminole County Public Schools implemented a full-day cell phone ban for elementary students beginning in the 2025-26 school year, so phones go in backpacks for the duration of the school day. The district also treats AI-assisted schoolwork as plagiarism under a policy adopted in 2024-25. Both are worth knowing before enrollment. Voters in November 2024 renewed a countywide penny sales tax for infrastructure, which continues to fund school facility improvements, security, and technology across the district.
The housing market around the school in Sanford sits close to Florida's statewide median home value, with values down modestly year over year. Rents have been essentially flat. Monthly mortgage costs at current rates represent a meaningful share of a typical household's budget relative to national income benchmarks. Sanford itself is in an active building phase: city officials publicly reported a historic surge in new housing units in the works in a single year, with large apartment complexes, townhome developments, and mixed-use projects moving through approvals. Some of that development is downtown, some on the city's edges. Families buying or renting near the school should factor in the pace of neighborhood change.
Sanford's downtown core, a short drive from the school's West 20th Street address, offers a walkable grid of brick-lined streets, independent restaurants and breweries, a Saturday farmers market, a performing arts center, and a multi-mile RiverWalk along Lake Monroe. Civic life outside that core is more car-dependent. The SunRail commuter line has a Sanford station with regional connections.
A comparison of Goldsboro's proficiency results against other districts in Seminole County was not calculable because the county contains only a single school district, making peer benchmarking within the county framework inapplicable. Families wanting to place these results in context would need to look at statewide Florida comparisons directly.
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