Summary:
Live Oak, Florida, is home to a single middle school, Suwannee Middle School, which serves grades 6 through 8 with an enrollment of 971 students and is part of the Suwannee District, a 2-star district ranking in the 30th percentile statewide.
Suwannee Middle School presents a mixed picture for parents. The school's overall state ranking has been stable, hovering around the 45th percentile (2 stars) over the last three years. A standout strength is 7th Grade Math, where 73% of students were proficient in 2025-2026—a remarkable 20 percentage points above the state average of 53%. However, this success does not carry into 8th Grade Math, where proficiency was only 38% in 2025-2026, far below the state average of 61%. In English Language Arts, the school consistently scores below state averages across all three grades. The school has a student-teacher ratio of 20.7:1 and spends $8,928 per student, with 58.7% of students eligible for free or reduced lunch.
A critical concern is the school's chronic absenteeism rate of 47.2%, which is 50% higher than the state average of 31.4%. This likely contributes to the school's overall middling performance. The dramatic contrast between strong 7th-grade math results and weak 8th-grade math suggests a potential issue with curriculum or instruction in later grades. While spending is not dramatically low, the academic outcomes do not reflect a high return on investment, indicating that challenges may stem more from student support systems and absenteeism than from funding alone.
Thank you for your feedback!