Genesee Street Elementary School, Auburn NY

Original Research by School Decision on Genesee Street Elementary School

Genesee Street Elementary is a neighborhood school serving kindergarten through sixth grade in Auburn, a small post-industrial city in the Finger Lakes region of central New York. The school sits in a mixed-use urban setting where older housing stock, a walkable downtown with restaurants and galleries, and civic anchors like the Seymour Public Library cluster a few blocks away.

The student body reflects Auburn's demographics and economic challenges. The school enrolls about three-hundred-and-fifty students, with just over half identifying as white, roughly a fifth as Black, a small share Hispanic, and the rest multiracial or other categories. Most significantly, a substantial majority of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, indicating that financial need is the dominant characteristic of this enrollment. No data on special education or English learner populations was available.

State test results from 2024-25 show persistent weakness across subjects and grades. In English language arts, proficiency rates ranged from low to modest across tested grades, with third grade the strongest performer and fourth grade the weakest. Math results were similarly strained, with fourth grade showing the lowest performance and fifth grade the only grade approaching modest proficiency levels. Science proficiency in fifth grade was also well below typical benchmarks. Across all tested grades and subjects, the school's overall proficiency index fell in the bottom quartile relative to other districts in Cayuga County, a gap a parent may want to understand in deeper conversation with the school. Student participation in state testing remained high, so these numbers reflect actual performance rather than incomplete testing.

The Auburn City School District has recently made intentional shifts that apply to this school: all K-5 grades now use literacy curricula aligned to the science of reading, with grades three through five using the Amplify CKLA program, and the district has adopted a Multi-Tiered Systems of Support framework with regular screening to catch students needing extra help. These changes represent a deliberate move toward stronger early literacy instruction. The district also lifted a constitutional debt limit in 2024 that had constrained facility investment, and voters approved a capital project in May 2025 focused on parking, walkways, drainage, and loading-dock upgrades across the school system, addressing deferred maintenance.

Auburn itself is a small city facing long-term population decline, with a median household income below state and national averages. Housing values are modest. The city's economic anchors include a major hospital, a state correctional facility, and school operations, alongside smaller food and manufacturing businesses. Downtown has seen adaptive reuse and infill development rather than sprawl. Families in this school community likely live within walking or short-driving distance of downtown's civic and cultural resources, including the library, theaters, and heritage sites centered around Harriet Tubman history.

Genesee Street is a regular public school without specialized programming or magnet designation. It serves as a traditional neighborhood elementary school in a city where school facilities are distributed across town rather than clustered in one area. For families, the primary considerations are the school's well-below-average test performance in reading and math, the socioeconomically disadvantaged student population, the district's recent instructional investments in literacy, and the modest but real efforts to address facility quality through capital projects.

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Academic performance

How students perform on state tests, by grade, set against the district.

Math

Grade 327%

School 27% · District 45% · ▼ 19 pts below district

▼ 32 pts below state median · ▼ 26 pts below county median

Grade 414%

School 14% · District 38% · ▼ 23 pts below district

▼ 44 pts below state median · ▼ 31 pts below county median

Grade 549%

School 49% · District 36% · ▲ 13 pts above district

▼ 2 pts below state median · ▲ 1 pts above county median

Grade 616%

School 16% · District 26% · ▼ 10 pts below district

▼ 29 pts below state median · ▼ 17 pts below county median

English language arts

Grade 314%

School 14% · District 36% · ▼ 22 pts below district

▼ 38 pts below state median · ▼ 29 pts below county median

Grade 412%

School 12% · District 27% · ▼ 15 pts below district

▼ 41 pts below state median · ▼ 24 pts below county median

Grade 526%

School 26% · District 40% · ▼ 14 pts below district

▼ 29 pts below state median · ▼ 18 pts below county median

Grade 630%

School 30% · District 34% · ▼ 4 pts below district

▼ 16 pts below state median · ▼ 15 pts below county median

Science

Grade 529%

School 29% · District 33% · ▼ 4 pts below district

▼ 13 pts below state median · ▼ 11 pts below county median

Social studies

Grade 577%

School 77% · district not reported

▼ 15 pts below state median · ▼ 12 pts below county median

This schoolAUBURN CITY SCHOOL DISTRICT, same grade

Graduation rate (ACGR) reflects the federally published Adjusted Cohort Graduation Rate for the most recent year available. We refresh this data annually at the close of each academic year in June. The federal source publishes a banded rate (for example, "90-94%") instead of an exact number for cohorts small enough to risk identifying individual students. The state distribution chart, where shown, plots every school in the state with a published rate or band; schools whose rate is federally suppressed are excluded. Where the federal source publishes a band rather than an exact rate, the school is placed within its band using a stable, ID-derived offset, so its position is consistent across visits.

Proficiency by household income

English language arts

Grade 4Lower-income6%Higher-income38%32 pp gap

Grade 5Lower-income24%Higher-income40%16 pp gap

Grade 6Lower-income26%Higher-income50%24 pp gap

Mathematics

Grade 4Lower-income11%Higher-income29%17 pp gap

Grade 5Lower-income47%Higher-income60%13 pp gap

Grade 6Lower-income16%Higher-income17%1 pp gap