Summary:
ZIP code 38666 contains just one elementary school, Green Hill Intermediate, which serves grades 3 through 5 in Sardis, Mississippi, as part of the North Panola School District. The school enrolls 264 students and maintains a student-teacher ratio of 16:1. Nearly the entire student body — 98.86% — qualifies for free or reduced lunch, indicating that the school serves an overwhelmingly low-income population. This economic context is important for parents to understand, as high-poverty schools often face significant challenges related to resources and student readiness.
Academically, Green Hill Intermediate has seen a troubling decline in its state ranking over the past several years. In 2016-2017, the school ranked in the 23rd percentile among Mississippi elementary schools. The following year, it improved slightly to the 29th percentile. However, by 2022-2023, the school fell to the 4th percentile — ranking 361st out of 377 schools. This represents a substantial drop in comparative performance. The ranking data does have a gap between 2018 and 2022, which may be due to the pandemic, so the most recent figure could be a single-year anomaly or the start of a sustained trend.
On a more positive note, chronic absenteeism at Green Hill Intermediate was 20.1% in 2023-2024, which is better than both the district rate of 36.3% and the statewide rate of 23.9%. While roughly one in five students still misses a significant amount of school, attendance is clearly not the primary obstacle for this school. The combination of extreme poverty and low academic performance suggests that academic support, resources, and economic factors likely play larger roles than attendance. For parents, this means the school faces real challenges, but the attendance picture and moderate class sizes offer a couple of bright spots in an otherwise difficult situation.
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