The top reported proficiency rate is 69% in English language arts. The lowest is 34% in Science.
Original Research by School Decision on Mary Snow School
Mary Snow School sits on Broadway in Bangor, serving a narrow band of the elementary pipeline: fourth and fifth grades only. That two-grade configuration is a deliberate structural choice, one that concentrates the school's work on the transition years between early elementary and middle school. For families, it means students spend just two years here before moving on to the next building in the Bangor Public Schools system.
The school's state assessment results paint a generally strong picture in the core subjects of math and English language arts. Proficiency in both subjects sits well above the middle of the range a parent would hope to see, with solid majorities of tested students reaching proficiency in each. Participation was full across every subject, which gives these results a reliable read on the whole student body rather than a partial slice. Science tells a different story. The proportion of students demonstrating proficiency in science is considerably lower, with only about a third of tested students clearing that bar. Because Maine typically assesses science at the fifth-grade level, only the older cohort at Mary Snow sits for that test. A parent may want to look into how science instruction is structured across the two grades and what the school is doing to strengthen it.
We looked for multi-year trend data to see whether these results are improving, declining, or holding steady, but no comparable prior-year results were available, so we left that out rather than guess. The same gap applies to average scale scores, which were not reported.
Enrollment is modest, as you would expect for a two-grade school. The student body is predominantly white, with a meaningful share of students identifying as Hispanic, Black, multiracial, Asian, and American Indian or Alaska Native. About a third of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, which gives a sense of the economic mix without pointing to concentrated poverty. Data on students receiving special education services and English learners was not reported, so we cannot characterize those populations here. Information on the school's Title I status was also absent.
Mary Snow is a traditional public school within Bangor Public Schools, not a charter or magnet. We searched for recent district-level changes that would matter to parents, such as program shifts, boundary adjustments, or leadership transitions, but found no reports of lasting parent-relevant changes in recent months. The district brief returned only general profile information.
Bangor sits in Penobscot County, and the housing market around the school reflects a small-city Maine context. Home values in the school's zip code run well below both state and national benchmarks, which positions the area as relatively accessible for families looking to buy. Rents are also modest by national standards, and the rent-to-income ratio suggests renting remains within reach for working households. The county market has seen a substantial increase in active listings recently, paired with a decline in pending sales and a dip in median listing price. Homes are sitting on the market a bit longer than they were a year ago. For families weighing a move into the attendance area, this points to a market with growing inventory and somewhat softening prices, though mortgage rates remain elevated by recent historical standards.
We looked for a locale brief to provide more grounded detail about Bangor itself, but none was available, so we cannot add community-specific texture beyond what the housing and economic data convey. Program offerings, staffing details, attendance figures, discipline data, and course-access information were also not provided, so those dimensions go unaddressed here.
What the available evidence does say is this: Mary Snow is a small, focused intermediate-grade school with solid math and reading outcomes, full test participation, a student body that reflects some demographic diversity, and a science result that stands apart from the stronger numbers in the other two subjects. Families considering the school should weigh the two-year structure, which offers a contained peer environment but requires transitions on both ends, and should ask the school directly about science instruction, special populations, and any programs or supports not captured in the data we received.
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