Summary:
The Hot Springs School District contains one middle school, Hot Springs Junior Academy, which serves grades 7 through 9 and has a substantial enrollment of 803 students. The school is located in an area where nearly all students (99.88%) qualify for free or reduced lunch, a key factor that provides important context for its academic performance.
Hot Springs Junior Academy shows a mixed academic profile with one standout strength and one significant challenge. The school excels in Biology, where 72.2% of 9th graders were proficient in the 2025-2026 school year—far exceeding the state average of 42.7%. This is a remarkable outlier given that the school's overall proficiency rates in other subjects are below state averages, including English Language Arts (29% vs. 39.4%), Mathematics (28.8% vs. 44.1%), and Science (32.2% vs. 44%). The school's biggest weakness is Algebra, where only 15.8% of 9th graders are proficient, creating a dramatic "Algebra cliff" compared to the 69.3% proficiency rate for 8th graders taking the subject.
Despite spending $13,080 per student—a significant investment—the school has earned a 1-star rating for three consecutive years and ranks 236th out of 327 schools statewide. However, there are positive trends: the school showed year-over-year improvement from 2024-2025 to 2025-2026 in nearly all core subjects, with English Language Arts rising from 23.2% to 29% and Mathematics from 22.6% to 28.8%. The student-teacher ratio of 14.4:1 is reasonable, and the school's exceptional Biology performance suggests that targeted best practices could potentially be applied to other subjects. For parents, this school offers a dedicated staff working against significant socioeconomic challenges, with clear areas of both excellence and needed improvement.
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