The top reported proficiency rate is 80% in English language arts. The lowest is 76% in Math.
Original Research by School Decision on Halilts Elementary School
Halilts Elementary School serves prekindergarten through fourth grade on Bainbridge Island, a Kitsap County community connected to Seattle by a Washington State Ferries route. The school sits within the Bainbridge Island School District, which operates schools at multiple sites across the island. Halilts was renamed in 2023 from Charles Wilkes Elementary to honor a local petroglyph, a change that families navigating enrollment will encounter as a lasting institutional identity marker.
The school is a regular public school drawing from one of the island's residential neighborhoods. Bainbridge Island is an affluent bedroom community that has grown from a small incorporated town into an island-wide municipality while preserving green spaces, farms, and a self-described small-town character. The town center, Winslow, concentrates shops and restaurants near the ferry dock. Outside of Winslow the island is largely residential and rural, with hilly terrain and car-dependent neighborhoods. A substantial share of residents commute to Seattle for work by ferry. Housing costs on the island are high, well above national benchmarks, and rents are steep; this shapes the pool of families who can live in the school's attendance zone.
Halilts has a modest enrollment for an elementary school serving prekindergarten through fourth grade. The student population is predominantly white. Students who identify as two or more races make up a meaningful share of enrollment, and Asian and Hispanic students each account for a smaller but present slice of the student body. The rate of students qualifying for free or reduced-price lunch is low, consistent with the community's overall affluence. Data on students with individualized education programs and English learners was not available, so a parent may want to ask the school directly about the resources available for those populations.
State testing data for the most recent school year shows strong results in both English language arts and math. Third-grade proficiency in ELA and math, as well as fourth-grade proficiency in both subjects, all landed at levels that place the school in the top quartile on overall proficiency among the districts in Kitsap County. These are the first and only state assessment results available in the data, so no multiyear trend can be described; the picture is a single strong year.
Because Halilts serves only through fourth grade, there is no graduation rate to report. That gap reflects the grade band, not a school performance issue. The school feeds into Bainbridge Island's middle and high school pathways, which families exploring the entire district pipeline will want to investigate separately.
The district adopted a Race, Equity, and Identity Board Policy in 2021, a commitment the school board has described as guiding curriculum, culture, and the student experience in ways that some families may weigh when considering the school. That policy, together with the school's renaming, indicates an institutional emphasis on inclusivity and historical recognition that prospective families may want to understand in more detail.
For a family considering this school, the core picture is a small elementary school in an affluent island community with strong recent test results and a low share of students from low-income households. The school does not appear to offer specialized program designations such as magnet or Title I status; it is a neighborhood elementary school serving its local attendance area. The main limitations for a parent to investigate further are the missing special-education and English-learner counts, the lack of multiyear testing data to confirm consistency, and the question of how the district's equity policy translates into day-to-day classroom practice.
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