The top reported proficiency rate is 92% in Science. The lowest is 73% in English language arts.
Original Research by School Decision on Maxwell El Sch
Maxwell Elementary serves grades kindergarten through fifth in Greensburg, a county-seat town anchored by a historic downtown and ringed by commercial corridors along Route 30. The school sits in Hempfield Area School District, which covers a broader area of Westmoreland County and has been navigating substantial operational changes in recent years.
The school's academic standing is solid. On state testing in math for grades three through five, a majority of students performed at proficiency. In English language arts, proficiency was slightly lower but still represented a strong base. Science performance was notably higher, with a substantial majority meeting or exceeding proficiency. Across tested subjects and grades, Maxwell's overall proficiency index places it in the top quartile among districts in Westmoreland County. This is the kind of classroom-by-classroom competence that parents can observe through daily work and report cards, even without the full year-to-year trend data.
The student body is predominantly white, with a small Asian population and very few students of other races or ethnicities. About a quarter of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, indicating a moderate spread of family economic circumstances in the catchment. The enrollment hovers around mid-size for an elementary school at this grade band, with fairly even distribution across grades.
Greensburg itself offers a walkable, historic downtown with cultural anchors such as the Palace Theatre and the Westmoreland Museum of American Art, plus parks and outdoor space nearby. The city is in active revitalization, with new zoning that encourages residential development downtown and ongoing restoration projects. Housing values in the 15601 zip code are below the state average but reasonable; rents are stable. The broader area includes commercial employers in health care, education, and retail, and the Amtrak station offers connections beyond the region, though service is once daily in each direction.
The district itself is managing a significant multi-year transition. Hempfield closed one of its three middle schools and consolidated those students into the other two, triggering attendance-boundary changes that shifted some elementary families' middle-school placement. More substantially, the district is in the midst of a major high school renovation funded by a bond, with ninth-graders temporarily housed elsewhere; that disruption will continue until construction finishes in a few years, at which point they will return to the main campus. At the same time, the district approved a property-tax increase for 2024-25 and eliminated several teaching and librarian positions to balance the budget. These are real constraints on resources and staffing that parents may want to track as they unfold.
Maxwell feeds into a district experiencing both growth and budget pressure. The strengths visible in the school's testing performance suggest solid foundational teaching, but the family context is worth understanding: the district is managing capital projects, enrollment movements, and staffing reductions that will shape the environment over the next few years. For families considering the school, those district-level factors are worth discussing directly with the school and district leadership.
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