Summary:
ZIP code 38012, which includes Brownsville, Tennessee, contains exactly one middle school: Sunny Hill Intermediate School, serving grades 5 through 6. This school is part of Haywood County Schools, a district ranked in the bottom 1% of Tennessee districts. Because it is the only middle school in the area, the following insights focus entirely on Sunny Hill’s performance, its strengths, and the challenges it faces.
Academically, Sunny Hill Intermediate School trails state averages in every tested subject. Proficiency rates are especially low in mathematics, where only 15.3% of students are proficient compared to 43% statewide — a gap of nearly 28 percentage points. Science (21.4%) and social studies (25.9%) also lag by more than 25 points. English Language Arts shows the smallest gap at 16 points, with 24.3% proficiency. A particularly concerning pattern is the sharp drop in performance from 5th to 6th grade: math proficiency falls from 20.8% to 10.3%, and science falls from 24.7% to 18.4%. This suggests that as students advance, they may be encountering harder material without sufficient support, or that learning gaps are compounding over time.
Despite these academic struggles, there are positive signs. Chronic absenteeism at Sunny Hill is remarkably low at 10.7%, compared to 18.1% for the district and 18.3% for the state. The school also shows year-over-year improvement in all subjects, with social studies up 4.2 points, ELA up 1.6 points, and science up 1.5 points. Per-student spending is substantial at $15,725, a figure that highlights significant financial investment, even though outcomes remain below state standards. Missing data, such as free/reduced lunch rates and student-teacher ratios, limits a fuller picture, but the combination of strong attendance, consistent improvement, and high funding suggests that targeted support — especially for 6th-grade math — could help build on the school’s emerging momentum.
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