Juliet W. Long School

Juliet W. Long School is an upper elementary school serving 265 students in grades 3–5 in Gales Ferry, Connecticut, as part of the Ledyard School District. The school consistently ranks near the middle of Connecticut elementary schools (236th out of 491, 52nd percentile) but stands out for exceptional attendance and strong math and science results.

Only 5.8% of Long students were chronically absent in the most recent school year, compared with 14.0% across the district and 16.4% statewide – a gap that has held for several years. Academically, math proficiency exceeds state averages at every grade level, and 5th-grade science proficiency hit 68% versus 52.9% statewide. English language arts is more uneven, particularly in 4th grade, where scores have fluctuated widely in recent years; this likely reflects small class sizes rather than a systemic issue but is worth watching.

Long achieves these results with notably lower per-pupil spending ($9,008) and larger class sizes than nearby schools like Gales Ferry School ($17,745) or Quaker Hill Elementary School ($18,121). Its sister building, Gales Ferry School for K–2, has more resources but a worse attendance rate, while Gallup Hill School – the district’s other scored elementary – sits at a similar ranking. Long also serves a relatively economically advantaged population, with a 25.7% free/reduced-price lunch rate, and its low-income students have recently outperformed state expectations. One area to monitor is that some student subgroup results trail the school’s overall ranking, so families may want to ask how intervention and enrichment supports are distributed across classrooms.