The top reported proficiency rate is 68% in Science. The lowest is 44% in English language arts.
Original Research by School Decision on Pelahatchie Elementary School
Pelahatchie Elementary School sits in the heart of a small Rankin County town about twenty miles east of Jackson, serving pre-kindergarten through sixth grade as part of the Rankin County School District. It is a traditional public school, not a charter or magnet, and it draws from a community where civic life clusters along Second Street around the municipal building, Muscadine Park, and the fire department. The town is compact and walkable at its core, though daily life beyond that immediate center runs on a car. Publicly reported sources describe Pelahatchie as a mix of residential and light commercial, with the Muscadine Jubilee standing out as a community gathering. No fixed-route transit serves the area, and the town lacks its own public library branch, relying instead on the broader Rankin County library system.
The school's enrollment is modest for its grade span, and its student body is predominantly white, with a meaningful Black minority and smaller shares of multiracial and Hispanic students. A substantial majority of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, which places the school in the category of serving a economically working-class population. Data on English learners and students with individualized education programs was not reported, so those population shares remain unknown here. The same is true for staffing, attendance, discipline, and course access: the payload carries no information on those topics, so this account leaves them out rather than guess.
On Mississippi's MAAP assessments for the most recent school year, math results are a relative strength. Proficiency rates across third through sixth grade sit above the halfway mark in every tested grade, with sixth grade reaching the school's highest math result. Science proficiency in fifth grade is the strongest single result the school posts. English language arts tells a more uneven story. Third grade starts at a solid level, but proficiency drops off in fourth grade and falls further in fifth, where fewer than two in five tested students reach proficiency. Sixth grade ELA recovers only slightly from that dip. This pattern, with math outpacing reading in the upper elementary grades, is one a parent may want to look into further with the school, particularly around how literacy instruction progresses from early to later elementary.
No multi-year trend data was available, so it is not possible to say from this payload whether these results represent improvement, decline, or stability. Participation rates for the assessments were also missing. No graduation rate applies here, since the school does not serve high school grades, and no civil-rights data was provided.
Housing in the Pelahatchie ZIP code sits below the national benchmark for typical home values and modestly above the state figure, which points to a relatively affordable market with some recent appreciation. The broader economic picture is one of a small town with limited local employment, where some residents likely commute toward the Jackson metro. Median household income runs below the national average. Growth signals are thin: publicly reported sources mention park construction and a Governor's Excellence Award but no large-scale housing or commercial development.
What this adds up to is a small-town elementary school with solid math and science outcomes and a clear soft spot in upper-grade reading, serving a working-class community in an affordable housing market within commuting distance of Jackson. Families considering Pelahatchie Elementary would do well to ask the school directly about its literacy supports in the later grades and about any programs, staffing details, or attendance and discipline data that this profile does not carry.
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