The top reported proficiency rate is 73% in Science. The lowest is 54% in English language arts.
Original Research by School Decision on Rashkis Elementary
Rashkis Elementary serves pre-K through fifth grade in Chapel Hill, with a student body that reflects both the university town's affluent, educated population and its high-poverty student base. About half the school qualifies for free or reduced-price lunch, and the enrollment is ethnically diverse: roughly a third White, a quarter Asian, a fifth Black, and smaller shares Hispanic and multiracial. The school sits at around average size for its grade band, with enrollment spread fairly evenly across grades.
In state testing, Rashkis shows a split profile. Math proficiency sits solidly above the county midpoint; science also comes in well above the median. English language arts is the softer area, landing at about the median for districts in Orange County. Across all three tested subjects, the school's overall proficiency index places it above the midpoint among county districts. The school tests only grades three through five in state assessments, so the profile does not capture the early-grade experience at pre-K, kindergarten, and grades one and two, which make up a substantial portion of the building.
Chapel Hill itself is a college town built around UNC and UNC Health Care, with downtown anchored on historic Franklin Street and the campus immediately adjacent. The community offers extensive greenways, parks, and a fare-free transit system, and civic life is tied to the university. Housing prices are well above state and national benchmarks, though rents remain more moderate. The area is in the middle of a housing boom after a decade of very little construction; major developments underway include South Creek (a large mixed-use project with hundreds of homes expected to begin occupancy in 2026), Coker Place, and Hillside Trace, a major affordable-housing initiative. This growth will reshape the town's footprint and likely affect school enrollment in the coming years.
The Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools district faces enrollment headwinds. Since the pandemic, the district has lost about a thousand students. In June 2026, the board voted to close Glenwood Elementary, a Mandarin dual-language magnet, at the end of the 2026-27 school year, with its students reassigned elsewhere and district-wide elementary redistricting to follow. The closure is meant to save money and address declining enrollment. At the same time, the county passed a school facilities bond in November 2024; CHCCS will receive a substantial share to rebuild three of its oldest elementary schools, Carrboro, Estes Hills, and Frank Porter Graham. That capital improvement will add to property tax bills over roughly two decades but will modernize the physical plant for those attendance zones. Meanwhile, the district is shifting its English language arts instruction to a science-of-reading model for implementation in 2026-27, a curriculum overhaul that will touch every elementary classroom.
Rashkis itself sits in Meadowmont, a planned residential neighborhood separate from downtown, with its own village center and parks. It is not one of the three schools slated for rebuilding and is not facing closure, so families here are not navigating immediate facility upheaval, though the broader enrollment decline and redistricting do create uncertainty. The school's English language arts results suggest a parent may want to look into further what instructional approaches are in place and how the new reading curriculum will be rolled out.
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