The top reported proficiency rate is 36% in Math.
Original Research by School Decision on Belmont Elementary School
Belmont Elementary School sits on Riverview Drive in Belmont, a small residential town perched along the Ohio River in Pleasants County, West Virginia. The school serves pre-kindergarten through fourth grade and shares its building with Pleasants County Middle School, which takes the county's fifth through eighth graders. The combined complex overlooks Route 2 and functions as a civic anchor for the town. Its tennis and basketball courts, baseball and softball fields, playground, and paved walking track are open to the public, doubling as the community's main recreational amenities. A parent dropping off a young child here is also dropping them into the physical heart of the town.
The student body is small for its grade band, with enrollment spread across pre-k and six elementary grades. Demographically, the school is nearly entirely white, with only a handful of students identifying as multiracial or Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander. No Black, Hispanic, Asian, or American Indian students were reported in the current data. Free and reduced-price lunch figures, special education rates, and English learner counts were not available, so the socioeconomic picture of the classroom is something a parent would want to ask the school about directly.
Academically, the state picture is limited by the school's grade range. West Virginia's General Summative Assessment begins in third grade, so pre-k through second grade have no state testing results, and that is simply because those grades are not tested. Science is assessed in fifth grade, which Belmont Elementary does not serve, so science proficiency is not applicable here. What the data does cover is third and fourth grade math and English language arts.
In math, third graders showed proficiency below the statewide midpoint, with roughly three in ten reaching the proficient threshold. Fourth graders fared better, with a higher share clearing proficiency. In English language arts, third and fourth graders landed close to each other, with about a third of each grade proficient. Participation was full across the board. No trend data was available beyond the current year, so there is no way to tell from this data whether these results reflect improvement, decline, or stability. Average scale scores were also missing. A parent trying to gauge academic trajectory would want to look into several years of results with the school directly.
The town itself is quiet and compact, with a primarily residential grid along the river and hills rising behind it. There is no traditional downtown commercial strip or active street-life district evident from available sources. The largest local employment sectors are educational services and health care and social assistance, and the town sits within the Parkersburg-Marietta-Vienna metropolitan area, so some residents commute to nearby communities for work. The Willow Island Power Plant is visible from town. The Ohio River and the French Creek Water Trail provide water-based recreation, and the Ohio River Islands National Wildlife Refuge sits just west of the community. Belmont's population has been declining gradually for two decades, and no major new housing developments or commercial growth projects are mentioned in publicly reported sources.
Housing in the school's zip code is inexpensive by both state and national standards, with a typical home value well below the West Virginia benchmark and far below the national one. That value has been declining year over year. Estimated monthly mortgage costs at current rates are modest, and the price-to-income ratio sits below the national midpoint, suggesting relative affordability for buyers with stable income. Rental data was not available for this area.
No district-level changes or strategic initiatives surfaced in the research for Pleasants County Schools, so there is nothing to report there. Title I status was not reported, and discipline, course access, staffing, and attendance data were not available.
What a parent finds at Belmont Elementary is a very small, community-anchored elementary school in a quiet river town, with state proficiency results that sit in the lower-to-middle range for the tested grades and limited publicly available data on student supports, trends, and special populations. The school's deep integration into town life, with its facilities serving as public amenities, is a genuine asset for families who want a setting where the school and community are intertwined. The academic results, while not strong in absolute terms, are drawn from small tested cohorts, and a parent weighing this school would benefit from talking with staff about how those numbers translate into day-to-day classroom experience and what growth looks like from year to year.
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