The top reported proficiency rate is 50% in Math. The lowest is 28% in English language arts.
Original Research by School Decision on Forest Elementary School
Forest Elementary School sits on Cleveland Street in Forest, the county seat of Scott County, Mississippi. It is part of the Forest Municipal School District and serves children from kindergarten through fourth grade. The school draws from a community where poultry processing plants operated by Koch Foods, Tyson Foods, and the Forest Packing Company are major employers, alongside a Raytheon manufacturing center that builds electronic equipment for radar and sensor systems. Publicly reported sources describe Forest as a small city with a minority-majority population, and that character is reflected in the school itself. Hispanic students form the largest group at Forest Elementary, followed closely by Black students, with small numbers of white, multiracial, American Indian, and Asian students. Every student in the building qualifies for free or reduced-price lunch, which places the school among the highest-need student populations in the state.
On state assessments, the most recent MAAP results tell a mixed story. In mathematics, roughly half of third and fourth graders reached proficiency, which is a middling result for the state. English language arts is where the school struggles more. Fewer than a third of fourth graders and about a quarter of third graders demonstrated proficiency in reading and writing. This is a gap a parent may want to look into further with the school, particularly if early literacy support is a priority for the family. The data does not include participation rates, so it is not possible to confirm how complete the testing coverage was. IEP and English Learner rates were not reported in the data available, which is a gap worth noting given the large Hispanic enrollment and the likelihood that a meaningful share of students are navigating language acquisition alongside their early education.
Because Forest Elementary serves only kindergarten through fourth grade, there is no graduation rate, no AP or dual-credit coursework, and no college-readiness data to report. Those measures simply do not apply at this grade band. The school does not carry charter or magnet status, and Title I information was not provided in the data, though the universal free-or-reduced-price-lunch rate strongly suggests the school operates under that federal framework. No staffing, attendance, or discipline data was available, and no program offerings were listed.
The housing market around the school is one of the most affordable in the state. Home values in the 39074 zip code sit well below the Mississippi benchmark and far below national figures. A price-to-income ratio modestly above the national average suggests that while housing is inexpensive in absolute terms, local wages keep ownership somewhat stretched relative to earnings. Year-over-year home value growth has been strong recently, though this comes off a low base. Rent data was not available for this area. The broader community has experienced population decline over the past two decades, with publicly reported figures showing a steady decrease through the 2020 census and into more recent estimates. Median household income has risen slightly in recent years, but the overall trajectory of the city is one of contraction rather than expansion.
Forest is highly car-dependent. Residents mostly drive alone to work, and no public transit system or meaningful pedestrian infrastructure was noted. The city is connected by Interstate 20 and several state and federal highways, which gives families vehicle access to neighboring towns and to Roosevelt State Park and other recreational areas nearby. Within Forest itself, Gaddis Park and city recreational facilities provide gathering spaces, and the Village Square Shopping Center serves as a retail anchor. No public library was identified in publicly reported sources. East Central Community College operates a career-technical center in Forest, which matters more for older siblings than for elementary families but speaks to the educational pipeline available beyond this school.
The district brief returned no usable results, so information about recent bond referendums, strategic priorities, or facility investments was not available. Rather than guess, that gap is left open. What the data does show is an elementary school serving a high-need, predominantly Hispanic and Black student body in a small, industrially anchored county seat where housing is cheap, the population is shrinking, and the nearest academic challenge is in reading rather than math.
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