Best Middle Schools in Zip Code 96749

ZIP code 96749 has exactly one middle school, Keaau Middle School, which serves grades 6–8 in Keaau, Hawaii, under the statewide Hawaii Department of Education. It enrolls 696 students, making it a sizable local middle school. Because it is the only middle school in this ZIP code, parents have no local public middle-school alternative to compare it with; the useful comparisons are to its own past performance and to ranked Hawaii middle schools statewide. Its student-teacher ratio is 13.9:1 in 2024–2025, and per-student spending was $17,491 in 2018–2019, though that spending figure is dated.

Academically, the school has received a 1-star rating in each of the last three reported years. Its state rank was 68th of 89 (24th percentile) in 2023–2024, 63rd of 84 (25th percentile) in 2024–2025, and 63rd of 85 (26th percentile) in 2025–2026. That means it ranked above roughly one-quarter of ranked Hawaii middle schools and below about three-quarters. In 2025–2026, proficiency was 36% in English Language Arts, 15% in Mathematics, and 32% in Science. The prior year, ELA was 34%, Math was 17%, and Science was 32%. No test-score values in this record are suppressed, bounded, or given as ranges; the reported proficiency figures are exact percentages.

For parents, the clearest academic strengths and concerns are subject-specific. ELA is the strongest tested subject and improved slightly, from 34% to 36%, while Science held steady at 32%. Math is the weakest subject and declined from 17% to 15%, and the ELA–Math gap widened from 17 to 21 percentage points. Attendance and economic context are also notable: 37.0% chronic absenteeism in 2024–2025 corresponds to roughly 258 students, and 71.84% free/reduced lunch corresponds to about 500 students. These factors can affect learning, but the available data does not show causation. The district metadata lists the statewide district as rank 1 of 1 with 5 stars, but because Hawaii has a single statewide district, that ranking does not offset the school’s 1-star state rank. The most actionable signals are math proficiency and attendance, while ELA shows a modest positive trend.