Humphreys County High School

Humphreys County High School in Belzoni, MS, serves 427 students in grades 9–12 and is part of the Mississippi Achievement School District of Humphreys County, a state-managed district in the rural Mississippi Delta. The school ranks in the bottom 10% of Mississippi high schools, and all students qualify for free or reduced lunch. That said, the picture is mixed: the student-teacher ratio is a healthy 13.2:1, and the school actually outperforms nearby Gentry High School in Indianola in algebra and biology, despite Gentry having a much higher overall ranking and graduation rate.

One of the biggest concerns is the graduation rate, which fell sharply from 86.6% to 74.2% in 2024–2025—more than 17 points below Gentry’s 91.4% and far below the state average of 89.2%. Chronic absenteeism, however, is a bright spot relative to the region: 27.2% of Humphreys students were chronically absent in 2023–2024, compared to a staggering 59.1% at Gentry. Academically, proficiency on Mississippi’s MAAP exams is below state averages in every subject. The weakest area is English II, where just 26.5% of students were proficient in 2024–2025. Biology proficiency has collapsed from 57.3% to 26.5% over three years, while algebra remains a relative strength at 46.8%—still below the state’s 66% but much better than Gentry’s 33.3%.

For parents, the key takeaway is that Humphreys County High School is a high-poverty school with some real instructional strengths in math and science, but it is struggling with literacy, graduation stability, and overall consistency. Compared to Gentry, it has fewer attendance problems but a worse graduation rate—suggesting that getting students to show up is not the only challenge. The school’s ranking has bounced around the bottom percentile since 2022, and the most recent data shows no clear upward trend. While the district and school face serious obstacles, the lower class sizes and pockets of subject-area success indicate that improvement is possible if literacy and graduation supports become the top priorities.