Perry Elementary School, Perry NY

Original Research by School Decision on Perry Elementary School

Perry Elementary serves pre-kindergarten through sixth grade in Perry, a small village in Wyoming County, about halfway between Buffalo and Rochester. The school sits on Olin Avenue a few blocks from the historic downtown, in a setting that mixes older residential neighborhoods with local civic anchors like the public library and parks. It is part of the Perry Central School District, a consolidated two-school operation serving the entire K-12 population.

The school's enrollment is distributed across nine grade bands, with roughly equal cohorts in each grade from kindergarten through sixth. Roughly two-fifths of the enrollment qualifies for free or reduced-price lunch, which is moderate for a rural area and reflects the mixed economic conditions of the village. The student body is predominantly white, with small numbers of Asian, Black, and Hispanic students, and a handful of students identifying as multiracial or Native Hawaiian.

State test results from the current school year show mixed performance across the board. In mathematics, third grade proficiency is above half, but proficiency declines as students progress through the grades, dropping below half by fifth grade and falling further in sixth. English language arts follows a similar downward trend: third-grade proficiency is below half, fourth grade stays there, fifth grade rises to above half, then falls again in sixth. Science, tested in fifth grade, shows proficiency below half as well. These results suggest the school faces headwinds in building student mastery across subjects and grade levels. A parent may want to look further into what instructional approaches the school is using to address this pattern and what supports are available for students who are not yet meeting standards.

Compared to other districts in Wyoming County, Perry Elementary's overall proficiency index sits above the midpoint, a positioning that reflects its math performance in the lower grades offsetting weaker showing across the board in upper grades and science.

Perry is actively investing in itself. The village has completed a downtown revitalization project funded by a state award, including new affordable housing, trail extensions, and community improvements. The district itself is in the middle of a multi-year capital construction project that includes access road and facilities upgrades around the school campus. The district also implemented a bell-to-bell cellphone ban beginning in the current school year, aligning with New York state policy, and added recreational items like ping pong tables and board games in the cafeteria to give students phone-free ways to socialize during lunch and study halls. These are lasting changes that shape daily life for families.

The school's physical location within walking distance of downtown, rather than on an isolated rural campus, means students and families can access the village's civic life and recreation infrastructure, including the public library, local shops and galleries, and the Silver Lake trail system. Housing values in the Perry zip code are well below both state and national averages, making it an affordable place to live, though the mortgage rate environment is moderately high. The unemployment rate sits at a modest level for the region.

Data on special education enrollment and English learner populations was not available in the school's reported metrics, so a parent seeking to understand supports for students with disabilities or multilingual learners would want to ask the school directly about those programs.

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Academic performance

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

Math

Grade 362%

School 62% · District 62%

▲ 3 pts above state median

Grade 455%

School 55% · District 54% · ▲ 1 pts above district

▼ 3 pts below state median

Grade 551%

School 51% · District 51%

even with state median

Grade 645%

School 45% · District 45%

even with state median

English language arts

Grade 341%

School 41% · District 41%

▼ 11 pts below state median

Grade 441%

School 41% · District 40% · ▲ 1 pts above district

▼ 11 pts below state median

Grade 556%

School 56% · District 56%

▲ 1 pts above state median

Grade 638%

School 38% · District 38%

▼ 8 pts below state median

Science

Grade 537%

School 37% · District 37%

▼ 5 pts below state median

This schoolPERRY CENTRAL 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 3Lower-income35%Higher-income44%9 pp gap

Grade 4Lower-income38%Higher-income44%6 pp gap

Grade 5Lower-income42%Higher-income67%25 pp gap

Grade 6Lower-income25%Higher-income46%21 pp gap

Mathematics

Grade 3Lower-income41%Higher-income76%35 pp gap

Grade 4Lower-income43%Higher-income65%23 pp gap

Grade 5Lower-income33%Higher-income66%32 pp gap

Grade 6Lower-income38%Higher-income50%13 pp gap