Summary:
Zip code 33839, covering the Eagle Lake area, is home to a single high school, Lake Region High School, which serves grades 9 through 12 with a substantial enrollment of 1,568 students as part of the Polk County school district.
Lake Region High School faces significant challenges, consistently ranking in the bottom 20% of Florida high schools with a 1-star rating for the last three academic years. The school's most critical issue is a chronic absenteeism rate of 43.4%, which is over 12 percentage points higher than the state average and likely a primary driver of its low academic performance. With 72.32% of students qualifying for free or reduced lunch, the school serves a predominantly low-income population. Academic proficiency is well below both district and state averages in every subject, with the most pronounced gaps in math: only 23% of students are proficient in Algebra 1 and 27% in Geometry, compared to state averages of 63% and 56%, respectively. The school's strongest subject is US History, where 60% of students are proficient, though this still trails the state average of 74%.
Despite these struggles, Lake Region High School maintains a graduation rate of 87.6%, which is close to the district rate of 87.7% but well below the state average of 92.2%. This creates a paradox where most students graduate, yet many lack grade-level proficiency in core subjects, particularly math and English. The school's spending per student is $9,999, and its student-teacher ratio of 23.4:1 is slightly higher than the state average. For parents, the most impactful takeaway is that addressing the absenteeism crisis would likely be the single most effective intervention for improving outcomes at this school.
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