The top reported proficiency rate is 7% in Math. The lowest is 4% in Science.
Original Research by School Decision on Sumter Virtual Franchise
Sumter Virtual Franchise is a public, non-charter virtual school operated by the Sumter County district and based in Bushnell, Florida. It is listed as serving kindergarten through grade twelve, but the enrollment data tells a more precise story: the school's student body is extremely small, concentrated almost entirely in the upper grades, with nearly all students in grades eleven and twelve. This is not a comprehensive K-12 program in the traditional sense. Parents considering it should think of it primarily as a virtual pathway for upperclassmen rather than a full-range school.
The state assessment data available here covers only middle school grades and comes from a single school year. Proficiency results at the eighth-grade level, the one grade where scores were reported rather than suppressed, were very low across math, English language arts, and science. These numbers reflect only a small group of tested students, and suppression of some grade-level data means the picture is incomplete. Still, what is visible is well below typical state averages, and parents would reasonably want to ask the school directly what academic support structures are in place and how student outcomes have trended since. Given the school's apparent shift toward serving primarily high school students, the middle school assessment results may not describe current program conditions well, but the data available does not let us say more than that.
No graduation rate data was provided for this school. Free and reduced price lunch participation, special education, and English learner rates are all listed as missing. Civil rights outcomes data was also absent. These gaps make it difficult to characterize the student support environment in any depth.
Demographically, the student body is small enough that detailed demographic analysis is not meaningful, and the data sections carry those figures directly. The school draws from Sumter County, and free lunch eligibility data was not reported.
The school sits in Bushnell, the county seat of Sumter County. Publicly reported descriptions characterize it as a quiet, rural community set among ranchland and farms, with a low-density built environment and most residents owning their homes. A notable share of the population is retired. Bushnell is accessible from Interstate 75, and civic anchors include a branch of the county library system, city-maintained parks, Dade Battlefield Historic State Park, and the Withlacoochee State Forest nearby. No fixed-route public transit serving Bushnell was documented.
Sumter County itself is one of Florida's faster-growing counties, driven in part by proximity to The Villages. The school district has been responding to that growth by adding permanent classroom buildings at traditional campuses, and The Villages Charter School expanded substantially in fall 2023, broadening school-choice options for families where a parent is employed by The Villages.
Housing in the area has been appreciating modestly on a year-over-year basis, with local home values currently sitting below the Florida state median and roughly in line with the national median, making the market comparatively accessible by Florida standards. Rental index data was not available for this specific area.
The comparison framework for this school relative to other districts in Sumter County was not applicable here, partly because the county has only one district and partly because several metrics were missing from the school's own data. Chronic absenteeism and graduation rate comparisons could not be made for the same reason.
For a family weighing Sumter Virtual Franchise, the honest picture is thin on data. What is visible is a very small enrollment concentrated at the high school level, older state test results in middle grades that showed very low proficiency, and significant gaps in the supporting information a parent would typically use to evaluate a school. A direct conversation with the school about its current course offerings, graduation pathways, and academic support would fill in what the available data cannot.
See more original research from School Decision →