Summary
Fireweed Academy is a small public elementary school in Homer, Alaska, serving 104 students in grades K-6 and sharing a campus with West Homer Elementary in the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District. Despite its size, Fireweed Academy has been a consistently solid four-star school over the past decade, regularly outperforming district and state averages in English Language Arts, math, and science. In 2025-26, for example, 50.9% of Fireweed students were proficient in ELA and 49.1% in math, compared to 37.7% and 38.4% for the district and roughly 33% and 32% for the state.
Because the school is so small—roughly 15 students per grade—its test scores can swing dramatically from year to year and across grade levels. In 2025-26, only 23.1% of third graders were proficient in ELA, while 73.3% of fifth graders were. Math tells a different story: third grade was strong at 53.9% while fifth grade dropped to 40%. Science proficiency, at 66.7%, is a notable strength. When compared to nearby schools, Fireweed sits in a middle-to-upper tier: McNeil Canyon Elementary has surged to a top-five statewide ranking with standout math scores (82.7% proficiency), while Chapman School trails with proficiency below both district and state averages in most subjects. West Homer Elementary, sharing the same campus, posts slightly higher overall scores, but it serves only grades 3-6, which makes the comparison imperfect.
One pattern parents may want to ask about is the difference in how boys and girls perform. Male students have ranked in the top 10-20% of Alaska schools in recent years, while female students' results cluster near the statewide median—a gap that has persisted across multiple years. On a more encouraging note, Fireweed historically served economically disadvantaged students very well, earning a 96th-percentile state ranking for low-income students in 2018-19. With small classes (about 14 students per teacher) and a slightly lower share of low-income students than neighboring schools, Fireweed offers a supportive environment, though its tiny size means individual cohorts can make the school look stronger or weaker in any given year than its overall quality would suggest.
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