Southside Elementary School, Cairo GA

Original Research by School Decision on Southside Elementary School

Southside Elementary School is a small public elementary school in Cairo, serving prekindergarten through fifth grade. The school enrolls about half a thousand students, with a student body that is roughly evenly divided among Black, Hispanic, and white students. An overwhelming majority of students—more than nine out of ten—qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, reflecting the economic circumstances of the families the school serves.

Academic performance at Southside is currently below proficiency in most tested areas. In English language arts, the school's third-grade students show a proficiency rate in the low teens, fourth graders about fifteen percent, though fifth graders reach the high thirties. Math proficiency runs in the low thirties across grades three through five. Science proficiency at fifth grade sits just under forty percent. These results indicate that the majority of students at each grade level have not yet met grade-level standards in reading, writing, and mathematics, with the strongest performance appearing in fifth-grade science and English language arts. A parent may want to look into these results further with the school, including what targeted support exists for students not meeting standards and what trajectory the school is working toward.

The school sits in Cairo, a county-seat city in southwest Georgia with a walkable historic downtown centered on Broad Street, though the area outside the downtown core is car-oriented. Cairo is the home of a state branch campus of Southern Regional Technical College and maintains four city parks. The town's economy centers on manufacturing, healthcare, and retail trade, with Archbold Grady hospital and local industrial employers anchoring employment. A state infrastructure push currently underway includes a rural workforce housing grant to support new single-family homes and upgrades to the city's wastewater treatment plant and road infrastructure, suggesting modest growth momentum in the community.

Southside was reassigned students from Northside Elementary School, which the Grady County Board of Education closed at the end of the 2023-24 school year as part of a countywide rezoning plan meant to consolidate resources across four remaining elementary schools. The Grady County Schools district as a whole achieved full Cognia accreditation in December 2025 following a district-wide review.

Housing in the area is relatively affordable. The median home value runs well below the state and national benchmarks, and the monthly mortgage payment on a median-priced home is substantially lower than monthly rent in the area, making homeownership more economically accessible than renting for families with down-payment capacity.

The school's instructional environment and staffing details, along with attendance rates and chronic absenteeism data, were not available for this report. Enrollment data from the school spans all seven grade bands the school serves.

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Academic performance

How students perform on state tests, by grade, set against the district.

Math

Grade 332%

School 32% · District 39% · ▼ 7 pts below district

▼ 8 pts below state median

Grade 433%

School 33% · District 45% · ▼ 12 pts below district

▼ 12 pts below state median

Grade 530%

School 30% · District 41% · ▼ 10 pts below district

▼ 7 pts below state median

English language arts

Grade 318%

School 18% · District 29% · ▼ 11 pts below district

▼ 13 pts below state median

Grade 415%

School 15% · District 28% · ▼ 13 pts below district

▼ 19 pts below state median

Grade 538%

School 38% · District 35% · ▲ 4 pts above district

even with state median

Science

Grade 539%

School 39% · District 34% · ▲ 6 pts above district

even with state median

Social studies

Grades 3-880%

School 80% · district not reported

▼ 3 pts below state median

This schoolGrady County, same grade

Graduation rate (ACGR) reflects the federally published Adjusted Cohort Graduation Rate for the most recent year available. We refresh this data annually at the close of each academic year in June. The federal source publishes a banded rate (for example, "90-94%") instead of an exact number for cohorts small enough to risk identifying individual students. The state distribution chart, where shown, plots every school in the state with a published rate or band; schools whose rate is federally suppressed are excluded. Where the federal source publishes a band rather than an exact rate, the school is placed within its band using a stable, ID-derived offset, so its position is consistent across visits.