Summary:
ZIP code 55309 has three elementary schools — Independence Elementary, Liberty Elementary, and Big Lake Online K-5 — all in the Big Lake Public School District (district rank 188 of 458; 59th percentile; 3 stars). Together they enroll 1,538 students. The two brick-and-mortar schools form a grade-band pipeline: Liberty serves PK–2 with 756 students, and Independence serves 3–5 with 758 students. Big Lake Online serves K–5 and is very small at 24 students, about 1.6% of elementary enrollment. Free/reduced-lunch rates are tightly clustered, from 33.33% to 35.36%.
Independence Elementary is the academic standout. Its all-grades math proficiency of 51.1% is above the district's 45.1% and the state's 44.9%, and 5th-grade math is especially strong at 51.0% versus 41.9% statewide. Reading is weaker: 45.3%, below the state's 48.6%, with every tested grade below the state average. Science fell to 22.7% in 2025–2026 from 30.77% the prior year, now below the state's 25.5%. Its recent ranks are middling: 48th percentile with 2 stars in 2025–2026, after 53rd percentile with 3 stars in 2024–2025. Liberty Elementary has the most favorable staffing ratio, 13.1 students per teacher, compared with 15.3 at Independence and 35.8 at Big Lake Online, but no current 2025–2026 test scores are listed for it, so its older rankings are not a current academic signal.
Big Lake Online K-5 shows a striking split: math proficiency of 20%, far below district and state, while reading is 50%, above both. Its science score and all grade-level scores are suppressed by the state, so those values are unknown rather than zero, and with only 24 students percentages can swing widely. Parents comparing these schools should note that Liberty and Independence cannot be compared on test scores directly, since Liberty has no current tested grades in this data.
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