The Mountain Community School

The Mountain Community School is the only school in the The Mountain Community School district, serving grades K–8 with 190 students and earning a 4-star rating for 2025-2026.

This small K–8 school stands out for its strong academic performance and rapid improvement. The school’s statewide rank jumped from 507th in 2023-2024 to 217th in 2025-2026, putting it in the 85th percentile of all North Carolina schools. Reading is a clear strength: in 2025-2026, the school’s average reading proficiency was 75.7%, compared to 56.0% statewide. The largest reading advantages came in 5th grade (+35.2 points), 7th grade (+30.7 points), and 3rd grade (+30.1 points). In science, the school also exceeded the state by 10 points overall, with 5th graders hitting 95.2% proficiency versus 67.7% statewide. Math performance is mixed: 5th graders were 27.6 points above the state, but 8th graders were 25.2 points below, with only 27.8% proficient. Similar weaknesses appear for the same 8th-grade cohort in reading (−6.1 points) and science (−7.5 points), suggesting that this particular group is the school’s most challenging area.

For parents, the small class sizes are worth noting. With just 190 students across eight grades, individual grade cohorts are small, so a difference of even a few students can swing proficiency percentages dramatically. The 8th-grade math figure, for example, may represent only a handful of students. The school also reports chronic absenteeism of 13.6%, noticeably lower than the state’s 24.2%, which likely supports consistent learning. Free and reduced lunch data are not reported, so families cannot directly compare academic outcomes by poverty level. Overall, The Mountain Community School is an improving, tightly-knit K–8 school with excellent reading instruction, strong science outcomes, and an area of concern in the current 8th-grade cohort that parents may want to monitor.