Summary:
Zip code 24280 is home to a single elementary school, Belfast Elementary, a small, rural public school in Rosedale, Virginia that serves grades PK through 5 and enrolls 141 students. The school is part of Russell County Public Schools, a district ranked 80th out of 131 in Virginia, but Belfast itself is a significant positive outlier within that district.
Belfast Elementary has a strong recent ranking history, earning a 99th percentile rank and 5 stars in 2024–2025, then an 87th percentile rank and 4 stars in 2025–2026. The school outperformed both district and state proficiency rates in nearly every subject and grade tested. In 2025–2026, 3rd graders reached 100% proficiency in math and 93.33% in reading, compared to state averages of 74.04% and 67.61%, respectively. Fifth graders posted 88.24% in science and 94.12% in reading, both well above state levels. Even with a modest year-over-year decline, average proficiency remained high, with math at 90% and reading at 91.7%.
These results are especially notable because 91.49% of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, making this a high-poverty school achieving well above typical patterns. However, chronic absenteeism sits at 22%, about 1.5 times the district and state rates. Small grade-level cohorts of roughly 20–25 students mean a shift of just a few students can cause large percentage swings, so single-year changes should be interpreted with caution. One relative weak spot is Virginia Studies, where the school's 75% proficiency was only slightly above the district's 74.29%. With per-student spending of $6,294 and a 14.7:1 student-teacher ratio, Belfast Elementary delivers impressive academic results despite its challenges.
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