The top reported proficiency rate is 47% in Math. The lowest is 44% in Science.
Original Research by School Decision on Central Elementary School
Central Elementary School sits on Helene Street in Saint Albans, a small historic river city in Kanawha County, part of the Charleston metropolitan area. The school serves pre-kindergarten through fifth grade and operates as a regular public school within Kanawha County Schools. Saint Albans itself is a residential community with a modest commercial downtown along MacCorkle Avenue, where shops, restaurants, and the Alban Arts Center give the core some street-level life. The city sits at the confluence of the Kanawha and Coal Rivers, and public web sources describe it as marketing itself around river-based recreation and community events, with seven city-managed parks and newly established flatwater trail access. Outside the downtown strip, the built environment is auto-oriented, bisected by highways and close to interstates. Schools here are distributed across residential neighborhoods rather than clustered downtown, and Central Elementary fits that pattern as a neighborhood campus.
The school is modest in size for its grade band. Its enrollment is predominantly white, with small numbers of Black students and students of two or more races, and very few Asian or Hispanic students. Free- and reduced-price lunch data was not available, so the economic profile of the student body cannot be characterized from what was provided. Likewise, IEP and English learner counts were missing, so there is no picture here of special education or language support populations.
On state assessments, Central Elementary shows a mixed but uneven academic profile across the tested grades. In math, fifth graders performed well, with a solid majority reaching proficiency, and third graders were close behind at a respectable level. Fourth grade math was the soft spot, with only about a third of tested students proficient, a result a parent may want to look into further with the school to understand what drove that dip. English language arts followed a nearly identical pattern: fifth graders were strong, third graders landed in a middling range, and fourth graders were the weakest cohort, with roughly a third proficient. Science was tested only in fifth grade, where results were middling, with somewhat fewer than half of students reaching proficiency. Participation was full across every tested grade and subject, which means the results reflect the whole cohort rather than a subset. No trend data was available beyond the current year, so it is not possible to say whether these results represent improvement or decline from prior years.
There is no graduation rate to report, which is expected because Central Elementary does not serve high school grades. Middle school assessment rows for grades six through eight appear in the data but carry no values, and that is consistent with the school's grade band ending at fifth. No civil rights, discipline, course access, staffing, or attendance data was provided, so those dimensions of school environment are gaps in this picture.
The housing market around Central Elementary is affordable by any standard benchmark. The typical home value in the school's zip code sits well below both the state and national medians, and recent values have drifted downward slightly over the past year. Estimated monthly mortgage costs are modest, and rent burden relative to income is light. This places the area in reach for families buying their first home or renting on a moderate income, though the declining population trend in Saint Albans signals a community that has been contracting rather than growing. No major new housing or commercial development projects surfaced in publicly reported sources, and the district brief did not turn up recent referendums, consolidations, or curriculum overhauls with lasting impact.
For a family considering Central Elementary, the academic signal is one of variability by grade and subject rather than a uniform picture. The upper elementary grades show real strength in both math and reading, while the middle grades of the school have weaker results that warrant a direct conversation with school staff. The setting is a quiet, affordable river town within commuting distance of Charleston, with parks, a library branch, transit connections, and an arts center among its civic anchors. It is a community-oriented environment, not a fast-growing suburb, and families looking for that mix may find it a reasonable fit, with the caveat that some academic and demographic data gaps mean part of the decision will need to come from asking the school directly.
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