Harts Bluff El, Mount Plesant TX

Original Research by School Decision on Harts Bluff El

Harts Bluff Elementary serves grades pre-K through five in Mount Pleasant, a county-seat city in northeast Texas that functions as the commercial and industrial hub for a rural five-county region. The school sits on a separated campus north of downtown, away from the historic courthouse square where civic life centers.

The student body reflects the demographics of rural East Texas. About half the enrollment is Hispanic and roughly a third is white, with small populations of Asian, Black, and multiracial students. A substantial share of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. The school houses roughly five to six classes per grade, ranging from pre-K through fifth grade.

On state testing, the school's results are mixed and uneven by grade. Fourth-grade reading shows proficiency closer to the middle range; fifth-grade reading performance is noticeably stronger. Fourth-grade math sits below the middle. Fifth-grade science proficiency is weak. Small cohorts of Spanish-assessed students in third and fifth grade did not yield reliable score reporting. When aggregated across all tested grades and subjects, the school's overall proficiency index places it in the bottom quartile among the three districts in Titus County. This positioning suggests that a parent may want to look into the school's instructional approaches and support systems in math and science, where the results lag most.

The elementary sits within the Harts Bluff Independent School District, a small district in rural Titus County that has undergone significant change in recent years. In May 2023, voters passed a bond package that included the district's first debt-service tax rate, a measure the district noted it had operated without for some time. This bond funded school safety upgrades and classroom and art additions, financed by a tax increase that added to homeowner costs. The following year, in May 2024, voters rejected a larger bond package that would have funded major facility expansions including high school classrooms, science labs, dining expansion, and a gymnasium. The rejection left those capacity needs unfunded. These electoral outcomes suggest budget constraints and community uncertainty about facility investments, context that may shape what classroom resources and staffing the elementary has access to.

Mount Pleasant itself is a modest-sized city with a stable economy anchored in food processing, manufacturing, healthcare, and education. The town sits along Interstate 30 and benefits from a growing housing market, with new residential developments noted around the city. The downtown features a walkable 42-block historic district with locally owned shops, restaurants, and regular civic events like a farmers market and Christmas on the Square. Outside that core, daily commerce spreads along an auto-oriented highway corridor. The school district was enlarged when Winfield ISD dissolved and merged into it, a consolidation that shaped enrollment growth.

State testing data was available only for the most recent school year, so no trend information is available to show whether performance has been moving up or down over time. Other details commonly reported for schools, such as teacher staffing, attendance rates, discipline data, or special-education and English-learner enrollment counts, were not available in the public data. A parent or resident seeking to understand the school's academic trajectory, staff stability, or support services for learners with particular needs would benefit from reaching out to the school or district directly.

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Academic performance

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

Math

Grade 441%

School 41% · District 41%

even with state median

English language arts

Grade 30%

School 0% · District 56% · ▼ 56 pts below district

▼ 46 pts below state median

Grade 446%

School 46% · district not reported

▼ 3 pts below state median

Grade 563%

School 63% · district not reported

▲ 9 pts above state median

Science

Grade 534%

School 34% · district not reported

▲ 11 pts above state median

Social studies

Grade 840%

School 40% · District 25% · ▲ 15 pts above district

▲ 16 pts above state median

This schoolHARTS BLUFF ISD, 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-income44%Higher-income75%31 pp gap

Grade 6Lower-income45%Higher-income64%19 pp gap

Grade 7Lower-income63%Higher-income80%17 pp gap

Grade 8Lower-income77%Higher-income79%2 pp gap

Mathematics

Grade 3Lower-income43%Higher-income42%1 pp gap

Grade 4Lower-income40%Higher-income43%3 pp gap

Grade 5Lower-income17%Higher-income56%39 pp gap

Grade 6Lower-income26%Higher-income59%33 pp gap

Grade 7Lower-income47%Higher-income53%6 pp gap

Grade 8Lower-income43%Higher-income47%4 pp gap