Fox Hollow Elementary School

Fox Hollow Elementary School in Port Richey, FL, is a mid-sized public school serving 636 students in grades PK-5 within the Pasco County School District, where a high percentage of families (77.83%) qualify for free or reduced-price lunch.

Fox Hollow has faced significant challenges, consistently ranking in the bottom 5% of all Florida elementary schools for the past five years. The most critical issue is a very high chronic absenteeism rate of 45.7% for the 2023-2024 school year, which is the highest among nearby schools and far above the state average of 31.4%. This means nearly half of the students are missing 10% or more of the school year, making consistent academic progress extremely difficult. Academic proficiency is below district and state averages in nearly every subject and grade level. For example, in 3rd grade math, only 39% of students were proficient compared to 66% statewide. This is a stark contrast to Dayspring Angeline, a school less than half a mile away, which ranks in the 67th percentile and has a much lower free/reduced lunch rate of 24.36%.

Despite these difficulties, there is a positive trend in 5th grade English Language Arts, where proficiency has risen from 13% in 2022-2023 to 49% in 2025-2026—a 277% increase over three years. This suggests that targeted interventions can work. While the school’s per-student spending has increased to $14,091, higher than some better-performing nearby schools like Cypress Elementary ($10,753), the data shows that simply spending more money is not enough. The school’s most urgent priority is a community-wide effort to improve student attendance, as this is the foundational barrier to all other academic progress.