The top reported proficiency rate is 42% in English language arts. The lowest is 36% in Science.
Original Research by School Decision on Elma E Barrera El
Elma E. Barrera Elementary sits on Highway 107 in Santa Rosa, a small rural community in northwestern Cameron County, deep in the Rio Grande Valley about twenty miles from the U.S.-Mexico border. The school serves prekindergarten through fifth grade within Santa Rosa ISD, which also operates a middle school and high school, giving families a single district pathway from early childhood through graduation.
The community itself has a tight-knit, agricultural character. Most residents own their homes, and publicly reported sources describe a place where neighbors recognize each other and gather around parks and local sports. The town's defining employer for generations was the Rio Grande Valley Sugar Growers mill, publicly reported as the last operating sugar mill in Texas until it closed recently due to water shortages, a loss felt across the local economy. A revival effort under new ownership was publicly reported as targeting a restart, which would matter considerably for farm and mill employment across the Valley. Population has been roughly flat to modestly declining in recent years. Housing costs here sit well below both state and national medians, and the price-to-income relationship is relatively accessible by national standards, reflecting the economic realities of a working rural community.
The school's enrollment is moderate for a PK-5 campus, and the student population is overwhelmingly Hispanic. The vast majority of students qualify for free or reduced-price meals, a signal of concentrated economic need that shapes what supports the school must provide. English learner and special education counts were not available in the data.
On the Texas STAAR assessment, the picture is mixed and worth reading carefully. Across all tested subjects and grades, roughly seven in ten students reach the "approaches grade level" threshold, which Texas uses as its basic performance floor. The share reaching the higher "meets grade level" bar drops to roughly four in ten, and only about one in four reaches the "masters" level. Subject by subject, third-grade math and reading proficiency at the meets-or-above level is low, climbing somewhat by fourth grade and more noticeably by fifth grade in math. Fifth-grade reading and science proficiency sits below half. Against districts in Cameron County, the school's overall proficiency index places it in the top quartile of that county set, which is a genuine relative strength given the county's context, though it reflects a county where scores broadly run lower than state averages. Multi-year trend data was available for only one year, so it is not yet possible to say whether results are improving, holding, or declining. A parent who wants to understand how individual students are progressing year over year may want to ask the school directly.
No course-access, discipline, attendance, or chronic absenteeism data was available in the payload. Information on specific programs, extracurriculars, or instructional approaches at Barrera Elementary was also not provided, so those are gaps a family would need to fill through direct contact with the school or district. The district brief search did not surface confirmed recent changes or strategic priorities for Santa Rosa ISD.
The civic anchor for the community is Santa Rosa Community Park, which received a renovation in recent years adding a splash pad, covered basketball pavilion, and jogging trail after flooding damaged the original facilities. Regional bus service connects the town to Harlingen and other Valley destinations from City Hall. The school sits in a setting where the surrounding institutions, the district, the park, the agricultural land are all compact and interwoven, the kind of small-town arrangement where school life and community life overlap considerably.
Elma E. Barrera is a school embedded in a close, economically modest rural community. Proficiency results are below state averages in absolute terms but comparatively positioned in the upper range within its county peer set. Families considering this school are entering a place where economic need is real, community identity is strong, and the path forward, academically and economically, is tied closely to what happens both inside that building and across the town it anchors.
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