Summary:
ZIP code 28429 has just one middle school serving the area: Holly Shelter Middle in Castle Hayne, North Carolina, enrolling 801 students in grades 6-8. Because no other middle school exists in this ZIP code, parents looking for a comparison should measure Holly Shelter Middle against its district, New Hanover County Schools, which earns a 3-star rating and ranks 84th out of 246 districts statewide. The district provides a strong benchmark, sitting at the 66th percentile of North Carolina districts.
Holly Shelter Middle serves an extremely high-need population: 99.13% of students qualify for free or reduced lunch, and chronic absenteeism runs at 24.3%, meaning roughly 1 in every 4 students misses enough school to be considered chronically absent. Despite this context, the school performs at or above state levels in several areas. In 2025-2026, 6th-grade math proficiency reached 63.8% versus the state's 59.2%, and 6th-grade reading reached 60.4% versus the state's 54.8%. However, the school trails its own district in most subjects, and the widest gap is in 7th-grade math, where 55.5% of students are proficient versus the district's 63.9%.
The school's statewide rank has slipped over three years, falling from the 72nd percentile in 2023-2024 to the 57th percentile in 2025-2026, even though some scores improved. The best news is in 6th grade, where math proficiency climbed 10.5 points and reading climbed 11.4 points year over year. The bigger concern is 8th grade: reading proficiency fell from 62.0% to 55.2%, science slipped from 70.9% to 66.5%, and math dipped from 58.5% to 55.6%. For parents, the overall picture is a high-poverty school performing around state averages in many subjects, with strong 6th-grade results but notable weaknesses in 7th-grade math and 8th-grade reading and science.
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