Summary:
ZIP code 28606 contains exactly one public school: Boomer-Ferguson Elementary School, a small K-5 elementary serving 111 students in Wilkes County Schools. Since no other school exists in this ZIP code, the fairest comparisons are to the district, the state, and the school's own past results. Boomer-Ferguson serves an intensely high-need population — 97.3% of students qualify for free or reduced lunch — and its roughly 18 students per grade make it one of the smaller elementary schools in the region.
In 2024–2025, Boomer-Ferguson Elementary School proved it could punch above its weight, beating both the district and the state in 4th grade math, 5th grade math, and 5th grade science, and matching the state in 5th grade reading. That year the school climbed to the 38th percentile in statewide rankings and earned 2 stars, up from the 16th percentile and 1 star the year before. The most recent 2025–2026 results, however, show a broad pullback: the school fell to the 23rd percentile with 1 star and trailed the district and state in every reported grade-level subject. Proficiency slipped from about 50% to 48% on average, most notably as 5th grade math dropped from 64.7% to 42.9% and 5th grade science fell from 70.6% to 47.6%.
Those swings should not be over-interpreted. Because each grade has so few students, a difference of only four or five children passing or failing can move proficiency by 20 percentage points, so year-to-year changes likely say more about a particular cohort than about the school's direction. Chronic absenteeism stands at 19.3% — better than North Carolina's 24.2% but above the district's 16.9% — and remains a hurdle. Reading is the clearest area for growth: proficiency lagged in 3rd and 4th grade in both years. Still, the school's 2024–2025 outperformance in math and science despite 97.3% poverty shows that economic disadvantage does not set a ceiling, and consistency in literacy will be the key to improving on the school's current bottom-quarter state ranking.
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