The top reported proficiency rate is 80% in Science. The lowest is 21% in English language arts.
Original Research by School Decision on Elementary Sch at Valparaiso
Elementary School at Valparaiso serves pre-kindergarten through fifth grade as a regular public school in the Raymond Central Public Schools district. The school sits within the rural village of Valparaiso, a small community at the intersection of two state highways about a twenty-mile drive northwest of Lincoln. The village functions primarily as a quiet, residential base with limited local commerce; its population has been essentially flat to slightly declining over the past decade. Families live in a housing market where local home values sit well above both the state and national benchmarks, suggesting a notably expensive entry point for a rural setting. The school itself occupies the original Valparaiso school building, which now houses only elementary students, while the district’s secondary campus for grades seven through twelve is located well outside the community at a former Nike missile site, a legacy of the merger that created Raymond Central from three earlier districts.
The student body is small. Enrollment by grade runs roughly evenly across kindergarten through fifth grade, with no pre-kindergarten students reported in the current count. The demographic composition is almost entirely white, with a very small Hispanic population. About one in five students qualifies for free or reduced-price lunch. Data on students with Individualized Education Programs and English learners was not provided, so a family seeking information on special education services or language support would want to ask the school directly about those populations.
Academic performance on Nebraska’s state assessments presents a complicated picture best understood by grade level rather than any single summary. In third grade, a majority of students met proficiency in English language arts, while math showed no students reaching that bar. Fourth grade logged a strong math proficiency rate, but the same grade produced no students proficient in English language arts. Fifth grade showed a high science proficiency rate, yet both math and English language arts in that grade registered zero percent proficient. The school’s aggregate proficiency index across all tested subjects and grades places it in the bottom quartile when compared to other districts in Saunders County. The year-over-year trend data for math and English language arts covers five years but does not allow a clean change calculation, so the trajectory is unclear from the evidence available. A parent would want to understand directly from the school how instruction and support vary across grades, given the sharp swings between strong and zero proficiency rates from one grade to the next.
Because the school serves only elementary grades, there is no graduation rate to report, no advanced coursework or career pathways to evaluate, and no chronic absenteeism data in the record. The district did not show any recent parent-relevant changes in the search conducted. The school is not a charter, and its Title I status was not reported.
For a family considering this school, the takeaway is that Elementary School at Valparaiso is a small, rural elementary building whose academic results fluctuate substantially by grade and subject, with some grades showing strong outcomes in particular areas and others showing none at all. The housing market to enter this community is expensive relative to state and national averages. The secondary school experience happens at a separate campus a significant distance from the village, so the elementary years represent only one leg of a longer commute pattern that continues into middle and high school.
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