CRYSTAL LAKE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

As an intimate elementary-level community in LAKELAND, Florida, CRYSTAL LAKE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL instructs 437 students from grades pre-K through 5, run under POLK. Compared to the state average of about 604 students per school, that is 28% smaller than typical.

CRYSTAL LAKE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL is one of 163 schools operated by POLK, a district that instructs 116,552 students overall.

Looking at the student body, CRYSTAL LAKE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL logs that the most-represented group is Hispanic (43%), with the rest of the student body spread across multiple groups; the rest comes out to 27% Black, 22% White, 7% multiracial. By comparison, Polk County as a whole is about 29% Hispanic, so the school skews considerably more Hispanic than its surroundings.

On the income-and-resources front, CRYSTAL LAKE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL logs 27 full-time-equivalent teachers, putting the student-to-teacher ratio at about 16.2:1. That figure is tighter than the state norm's 17.5:1 average. Roughly 80% of students at CRYSTAL LAKE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, a commonly cited indicator of low-income enrollment. Set against Polk County (around 65%), the school's rate is north of typical.

On a residual basis (actual vs predicted given the student mix), CRYSTAL LAKE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL performs roughly as the BeatsExpectations model predicts for a school with this FRL share. The predicted value is around 41.1%, the actual is 28.1%, a residual of -13.0 points.

In the surrounding community, community-level numbers for Polk County indicate the typical household earns roughly $65,978 per year, about 24% of the adult population holds a bachelor's degree or above, and the poverty rate sits near 11%. CRYSTAL LAKE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL is one of 172 public schools in Polk County (combined enrollment of about 117,004 students).

Nearest neighbor: FRESH START COMMUNITY SCHOOL, around 0.2 miles off. Counting just inside five miles, 8 other public schools cluster around CRYSTAL LAKE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL. Ranking that nearby cluster on reported proficiency puts CRYSTAL LAKE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL at 4th of 5; the average score across the group is 50.9%.

CRYSTAL LAKE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL operates from a residential location.

Looking at the recent track record. Over the past 7-year window, the student count edged down 9%: 480 students in 2018 compared to 437 in 2025. Over the same period, the Black share decreased from 38% to 27%. Class-load math has loosened: from 13.3:1 in 2018 to 16.2:1 in 2025.

In the discussion threads here, recent activity here tends to focus on fundraisers, lost-and-found posts, and report-card season. Anyone with firsthand experience at this school can post or comment.