The top reported proficiency rate is 63% in English language arts. The lowest is 30% in Science.
Original Research by School Decision on St Mary's Academy Charter School
St. Mary's Academy Charter School is a small K-6 charter school in Beeville serving approximately three hundred students in a working rural county-seat town in South Texas. It sits on North Tyler Street in the city's historic core, within walking distance of downtown and the Bee County Courthouse.
The school's most striking feature is a substantial performance imbalance between reading and math. In the latest state testing, upper elementary students in reading (grades 5 and 6) achieved proficiency rates well above half, with particularly strong results in sixth grade. Third grade reading also showed solid performance. By contrast, math results are uniformly low across all tested grades. Fourth grade in particular showed results below a quarter proficient. This gap persists even as students move into later grades: a sixth grader who may excel in reading faces math material where barely two in five meet the standard. Science proficiency in fifth grade was also low. When aggregated across all tested subjects, the school's overall proficiency index places it in the top tier among the five districts in Bee County, but that ranking rests heavily on reading strength; the math and science picture is considerably softer.
The school serves a student body that is overwhelmingly Hispanic, with a large share of families low-income. Roughly four in five students qualify for free or reduced-price meals, and the campus draws a tight, place-based enrollment from the local community rather than a district-wide or wider draw. The building is small enough that sixth grade comprises just a few dozen students, giving the school an intimate scale.
A parent considering this school would want to understand the reading-math divergence directly with school leadership. The school publicly reported a multi-year statewide ranking decline even as per-pupil spending rose, suggesting that additional resources have not yet reversed the math trajectory. Whether the gap reflects curriculum emphasis, instructional capacity, student demographics, prior preparation, or some mix of those factors is not visible in the available data, and a parent may want to look into this further with the school. The same applies to science: only limited testing data are available there, but what exists suggests it merits attention as a possible area for school improvement work.
The school's charter status means it operates under a different authorization and accountability structure than a traditional public school. Enrollment is open to anyone in Texas, not just Beeville residents, though in practice the campus draws locally. There is no waiting list visible in the available data; schools of this size in rural areas typically admit all applicants.
Beeville itself is a stable, intact small town anchored by public employment (state prisons, county government, Coastal Bend College) and traditional retail. Housing is affordable relative to state and national benchmarks, and the town retains a genuine civic core around the courthouse and library rather than functioning as a bedroom suburb. Population has declined in recent years, though the city is now actively planning new residential subdivisions to reverse that trend. For a family seeking a rural or small-town educational experience with a demographically cohesive, mostly Hispanic Catholic school community, St. Mary's offers that environment. For a family prioritizing strong math preparation or looking for breadth across multiple subjects, the performance data suggest asking detailed questions before enrolling.
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