The top reported proficiency rate is 55% in English language arts. The lowest is 38% in Science.
Original Research by School Decision on Samsula Academy
Samsula Academy is a small charter elementary school serving kindergarten through fifth grade, located on North Samsula Drive in New Smyrna Beach. Its enrollment is quite small for an elementary school, with each grade holding only a handful of classrooms' worth of children. The student body is predominantly white, with a modest share of Hispanic students and very few students of other backgrounds. Free-and-reduced-price lunch data was not reported, so economic context for the student population is not available from this data.
The school sits within Volusia County Schools as its authorizing district, though as a charter it operates independently of the traditional district assignment system. Parents choose it; it is not a neighborhood default.
On Florida's FAST assessments, the academic picture is mixed and worth examining closely. In reading and language arts across third, fourth, and fifth grades, proficiency rates cluster in the mid-fifties, meaning roughly half of tested students meet the state's standard in ELA. That is a middling result by Florida standards. Math shows more variation by grade: third graders perform at a meaningfully stronger level, with nearly two-thirds reaching proficiency, but by fifth grade that figure drops considerably, to well under a third of students. Fifth-grade science proficiency sits in a similar range, with fewer than four in ten students reaching the state benchmark. The drop from third to fifth grade in math is a pattern a prospective family may want to ask the school about directly, whether it reflects cohort differences, instructional capacity at the upper elementary level, or something else.
Trend data is not available, so there is no way to tell from this data whether these results are improving, declining, or holding steady over time. The school's small enrollment means grade-level results can shift substantially with a single cohort, which adds some caution to reading any one year's numbers as definitive.
No information was reported on chronic absenteeism, discipline, or staffing. The school's program offerings were not available in this data.
New Smyrna Beach itself has the character of a laid-back Atlantic coastal city in southeast Volusia County, with an older median population and a strong beach-town identity. Publicly reported sources describe two walkable historic commercial districts, the beachside Flagler Avenue strip and the inland Canal Street corridor, both organized around locally owned restaurants, galleries, and shops. The broader residential fabric is auto-dependent, and the growth happening around State Road 44 and near I-95 has brought thousands of new homes to the inland parts of the city in recent years. A new townhome development was publicly reported as beginning construction in early 2025, pointing to continued residential expansion in that corridor.
The housing market near Samsula Academy carries prices modestly above the statewide median, with values that have edged slightly downward year over year. Rents have moved in the opposite direction, rising over the same period, making ownership somewhat more cost-competitive than renting at current mortgage rates. The price-to-income ratio sits near the national average, suggesting the area is not dramatically more affordable or more expensive than a typical American market.
For a family specifically seeking a small, majority-white charter elementary in a coastal Florida community, Samsula Academy offers that setting. The academic results suggest the school produces solid early-grade math outcomes but that upper-elementary performance, particularly in fifth-grade math and science, is weaker and deserves a direct conversation with the school about what is driving those numbers and what support is in place for students who are not yet meeting state standards.
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