Summary:
The City of Heidelberg, Mississippi, is served by three public schools in the East Jasper School District—William J. Berry Elementary School, Heidelberg Junior High School, and Heidelberg High School—serving approximately 739 students from pre-kindergarten through 12th grade in a high-poverty rural area where all students receive free or reduced-price lunch.
The standout school is William J. Berry Elementary School, which has improved its statewide rank for three straight years and now sits at the 41st percentile. Its 5th-grade math proficiency jumped from 28.3% to 53.8% in one year, and 3rd-grade ELA is above the state average. However, 6th-grade ELA remains a weak spot at just 29.6%. In contrast, Heidelberg Junior High School is the district’s most concerning school, with its rank dropping from the 55th to the 32nd percentile, ELA proficiency below 25%, and the highest chronic absenteeism rate at 12.4%. Heidelberg High School has a mixed profile: Algebra I proficiency is stellar at 78.1%, well above the state average, and its graduation rate is 87.5%. But its Biology proficiency collapsed from 57.1% to 15%—a 42-point decline that demands urgent investigation.
One of the district’s biggest strengths is attendance: despite 100% poverty, chronic absenteeism rates of 10.0% to 12.4% are less than half the statewide rate of 23.9%. Academically, performance is uneven across grade bands—the district excels in early-grade math and Algebra I but falls far behind in upper-elementary, middle-school, and high-school science ELA and Biology. Interestingly, Heidelberg Junior High School has the smallest class sizes (10.5 students per teacher) yet the lowest achievement, showing that class size alone doesn’t guarantee results. The elementary school’s steady upward trend offers a model for the secondary schools, while the district must prioritize middle-school literacy and the troubling Biology decline at the high school.
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