The top reported proficiency rate is 90% in Social studies. The lowest is 39% in Science.
Original Research by School Decision on Andrew J Smith Elementary School
Andrew J. Smith Elementary School sits at the corner of Homer Street in the small lakeside village of Union Springs, on the east shore of Cayuga Lake in Cayuga County. It serves children from pre-kindergarten through fifth grade and is the elementary building for the Union Springs Central School District. The school is compact relative to its grade band, with classrooms spread across seven grade levels including pre-K.
The student body is predominantly white, with a smaller share of Hispanic students and a modest number of children identifying as two or more races. Roughly a third of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, placing the school somewhere in the middle ground between high-poverty and affluent settings. Data on English learners and students receiving special education services were not available in the information we reviewed.
State assessment results are available for grades three through five in math, ELA, and fifth-grade science, all tested on the New York State Testing Program. In ELA, the school shows a reasonably solid performance picture: third graders score at a level where a solid majority are proficient, fourth-grade ELA is similar, and fifth-grade ELA is the strongest of the three, with roughly seven in ten students reaching proficiency. Math tells a somewhat different story. Third-grade math proficiency is the high point, with close to two-thirds of students meeting the standard, but the rate drops noticeably by fourth grade and dips further in fifth grade, where fewer than half of students are at or above proficiency. Fifth-grade science is the area of greatest concern, with well under half of students reaching the proficient level. Parents who want to understand what underlies the fifth-grade math and science patterns, and what the school is doing to address them, may want to raise those questions directly with the school.
Placed against districts in Cayuga County, the school's overall proficiency index, which averages across all tested subjects and grades, lands in the top quartile of the county's eight districts. That position is worth noting: it reflects competitive performance relative to nearby peers, even with the softer fifth-grade results pulling the average down.
Trend data were not available in the information we reviewed, so we cannot describe whether these results are improving, stable, or declining.
On the facilities side, the district has been actively investing in its buildings over the past several years. A safety-focused project approved in late 2022 added security upgrades at both school buildings, including reinforced window film, improved locks, and door replacements. In 2023 and 2024, voters approved a phased plumbing overhaul of the main building, which had aging and failing pipe infrastructure. Most recently, voters passed a 2025 capital project that adds air conditioning to the A.J. Smith gym and cafeteria, which had no prior climate control, at no additional tax levy cost to residents. Taken together, these votes paint a picture of a community that has been consistently willing to fund building upkeep.
Union Springs itself is a small village with a historic core along Cayuga Street, a working waterfront at Frontenac Park, and an employment picture shaped partly by Cayuga Nation enterprises on Route 90 and partly by the school district itself. The city of Auburn is a short drive east and serves as the larger regional employment hub. Population has been essentially flat to slightly declining in recent years, and the community's growth story centers on tourism and waterfront revitalization rather than residential expansion: a multi-million-dollar Downtown Revitalization Initiative award, shared with the neighboring villages of Cayuga and Aurora, is funding park improvements, marina redevelopment, and pedestrian infrastructure along the Route 90 corridor.
The housing market around the school sits well below the New York State median, making Union Springs meaningfully more accessible than most of the state by purchase price, with values that have been rising modestly in recent months. Rental data for the immediate zip code was not available in what we reviewed.
Graduation rate data is not applicable to Andrew J. Smith, which ends at fifth grade. Advanced coursework, career pathways, and dual-enrollment offerings are similarly not part of an elementary school profile. A family looking at those questions would need to follow the pipeline into Union Springs Middle and High School.
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