The top reported proficiency rate is 70% in Science. The lowest is 38% in Math.
Original Research by School Decision on Okolona Elementary School
Okolona Elementary School sits on West Main Street in the heart of Okolona, a small Chickasaw County city that grew up along the Mobile and Ohio Railroad and later found a second life in furniture manufacturing. The town carries a quieter version of its former self; its population has declined over decades, and the commercial core along Main Street is a designated Mississippi Main Street corridor with retail, churches, and municipal offices. A four-lane bypass now carries through-traffic around the downtown, leaving Main Street to local life. Housing here is inexpensive relative to state and national norms, which aligns with the broader economic picture of a small Mississippi town working through population loss and revitalization efforts.
The school serves kindergarten through fifth grade and is part of the Okolona Separate School District. Its enrollment is modest for its grade band. The student body is predominantly Black, with small white and multiracial populations, and every student qualifies for free or reduced-price lunch. The school is not a charter and has no magnet designation on record. Title I status was not reported in the available data.
On the most recent Mississippi Academic Assessment Program results, the school's performance varies by subject and grade. Third-grade math proficiency sits in a middling range, with nearly half of tested students reaching proficient or above. That figure dips in fourth and fifth grades, where proficiency rates are lower. English language arts follows a different pattern: third grade lands in a moderate band, fourth grade drops, and fifth grade rebounds to a relatively strong level where a majority of tested students reached proficiency. Fifth-grade science stands out as the school's clearest academic strength, with a substantial majority of students scoring proficient or above. No multi-year trend data was available, so it is not possible to say whether these results represent improvement, decline, or stability over time. Participation rates for the assessments were not reported.
Because Okolona Elementary serves only elementary grades, it has no graduation rate, no AP or career-pathway data, and no high-school-level course access to report. Those metrics simply do not apply to a school in this grade band. Data on special populations, including students with individualized education programs and English learners, was not available. Discipline, staffing, attendance, and broader school environment details were also absent from the sources reviewed. A parent interested in those dimensions would want to ask the school directly.
The surrounding community context matters for what this school is. Okolona's economy centers on furniture manufacturing and municipal government, with no large employers identified by name in available public sources. The town is within a short drive of several community colleges and universities, including East Mississippi, Itawamba, Mississippi State, Ole Miss, Mississippi University for Women, and Blue Mountain College. The Tennessee-Tombigbee Port in Amory is roughly eighteen miles away. No public library branch was identified for the town in the research reviewed. These are the kinds of civic resources that shape what a family can access beyond the school day, and in Okolona they are limited but present within a reasonable distance.
One piece of context a parent should be aware of: publicly reported sources note that the Mississippi State Board of Education voted unanimously to abolish the Okolona Separate School District and appointed a conservator. The available district brief did not surface further details on recent parent-relevant changes, so the practical implications of that governance action for day-to-day school operations are not clear from the data provided. This is something a family would want to understand before enrolling or committing to the area.
What the data describes is a small, entirely low-income elementary school in a declining but historically rooted railroad town, with uneven assessment results across grades, a genuine bright spot in fifth-grade science, and an unresolved district governance situation hanging over it. For a family already rooted in Okolona, the school is the local option and has real areas of strength worth building on. For a family choosing where to live, the combination of affordable housing, a compact Main Street setting, and uncertain district leadership makes this a place to investigate carefully before deciding.
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