The top reported proficiency rate is 31% in English language arts. The lowest is 0% in Science.
Original Research by School Decision on Hawthorne Elementary School
Hawthorne Elementary School serves students from pre-kindergarten through fifth grade in Hastings, Nebraska, as part of Hastings Public Schools. It is a regular public school, not a charter or magnet school, and sits in a residential area of this mid-sized micropolitan city that serves as the Adams County seat.
The school’s student body is small for a K-5 building. The student population is predominantly white, with a substantial Hispanic share and very small numbers of Asian, Black, and multiracial students. Student counts by grade are relatively even across kindergarten through fifth grade, with pre-kindergarten also listed. A significant share of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, indicating that a large portion of families rely on this support. The proportion of students with individualized education plans or who are English learners was not reported in the available data. Hastings itself blends small-town Main Street commerce, college-town elements from Hastings College and Central Community College, and light industry. The housing market in the area shows typical home values that are below the state average, and rents are comparatively affordable relative to national benchmarks.
Looking at state assessment results, the picture is mixed and uneven across grades. In math, fourth graders showed proficiency at a rate that exceeded half of test-takers. However, third graders and fifth graders both recorded a zero percent proficiency rate. In English language arts, roughly half of third graders and about half of fourth graders scored as proficient. Again, fifth graders recorded a zero percent proficiency rate. The same zero percent result appeared for fifth graders in science. When considering a single school-year composite for the school, the overall proficiency index across tested subjects and grades sits well below the midpoint among the five districts in Adams County, placing Hawthorne in the bottom quartile of that comparison set. A multi-year trend in English language arts shows the single-year composite dropping slightly from the first to the last available point, and math followed a similar modest decline. Because the data provides only a single school year for these trend lines, it is not possible to say whether these represent an established pattern or a single-year fluctuation.
There is no graduation rate because the school does not serve high school grades. No information was provided on chronic absenteeism, discipline, staffing ratios, or course access. A parent may want to follow up directly with the school to understand the context for the testing results, particularly the zero percent proficiency scores recorded for multiple grades and subjects in the same year. The school’s website or a conversation with the principal could clarify whether those numbers reflect a small testing cohort, a specific student group, or data collection circumstances that a raw rate does not capture on its own.
The district brief for Hastings Public Schools noted no recent parent-relevant changes of lasting impact. The city itself has a stable, established character, with historic downtown architecture, a rail stop on Amtrak’s California Zephyr line, and adaptive reuse of its former Naval Ammunition Depot grounds for college and industrial purposes. The city’s public elementary schools are distributed across residential neighborhoods, and Hawthorne sits within that network. For a family considering this school, the central questions likely revolve around the academic patterns shown in the assessment data and how the school addresses them, alongside an understanding of the community’s character as a modest-sized city with a quiet, steady pace.
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