Summary
F. J. Kingsbury School is an elementary school in Waterbury, CT, serving 416 students in pre-kindergarten through 5th grade as part of the Waterbury School District. The school serves a predominantly low-income community, with 83.2% of students qualifying for free or reduced-price lunch. Academically, Kingsbury ranked 443rd out of 491 Connecticut elementary schools in 2025-26, placing it in the bottom 10th percentile statewide. While this is a low overall ranking, Kingsbury actually outperforms several nearby schools, including Sprague School, Driggs School, Walsh School, Reed School, Woodrow Wilson School, and Bunker Hill School. However, it lags significantly behind nearby options like Maloney Interdistrict Magnet School (40th percentile) and Regan School (39th percentile).
One of the school's most encouraging trends is chronic absenteeism, which has dropped from 38.7% in 2021-22 to 20.0% in 2025-26 — now below the Waterbury district average of 23.1%. That said, this rate remains well above the state average of 16.4% and far above Maloney's 6.2% and Regan's 4.3%. Test scores are generally below district and state averages, particularly in math and early-grade reading, but there have been bright spots: the 5th grade class in 2024-25 outperformed the district in both ELA (41.3% vs. 27.6%) and math (29.3% vs. 17.5%), and the 4th grade class in 2023-24 also exceeded district averages. These gains suggest that individual cohorts can achieve strong results, though the school has struggled to sustain them across all grades.
One of the most striking findings is a severe gender gap: male students at Kingsbury ranked 231st out of 232 schools statewide in 2025-26, essentially the lowest-performing in Connecticut for that subgroup. On a more positive note, African American students were rated 4 stars in 2020-21 (76th percentile statewide), showing the school can be effective for specific groups. Kingsbury also has the highest student-teacher ratio (15.5) of nearby schools and below-average per-student spending, which may present challenges given the high level of student need. Overall, Kingsbury is a school making real progress on attendance, but it remains in the bottom quintile of Connecticut elementary schools, with occasional cohort-level successes pointing toward what broader improvement might look like.
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