Summary:
Zip code 34235 is home to a single school, Gocio Elementary School, a public elementary school serving grades PK through 5 with 654 students in the highly-ranked Sarasota School District.
Gocio Elementary presents a compelling story of dramatic academic turnaround. Between the 2024-2025 and 2025-2026 school years, the school posted double-digit gains in nearly every subject, with 5th-grade English Language Arts proficiency jumping from 34% to 58% and 5th-grade Science soaring from 35% to 54%. This improvement lifted the school's overall state ranking from the 20th percentile (1-star) to the 38th percentile (2-star). Despite this progress, the school still lags behind both state and district averages, particularly in 4th and 5th grades. A notable bright spot is 3rd grade, where math proficiency (66%) now matches the state average. The school benefits from significant resources, including a low student-teacher ratio of 13.9:1 and high per-pupil spending of $19,225, which are typically associated with higher performance.
The most persistent challenge remains chronic absenteeism, which sits at a high 30.3%—meaning nearly a third of students are missing too much school. This issue, combined with the fact that 81% of students qualify for free or reduced lunch, provides critical context for understanding the school's performance. While the recent academic gains are encouraging and suggest effective new interventions are working, the high absenteeism rate remains a significant barrier to reaching the top-tier benchmarks set by the surrounding Sarasota district, which ranks in the 87th percentile statewide.
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