JAMES A. LONG ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

JAMES A. LONG ELEMENTARY SCHOOL is one of the middle-of-the-pack elementary schools in PALATKA, Florida, operated by PUTNAM, with 565 students on its rolls from grades K through 6.

PUTNAM comprises 18 schools with combined enrollment of 10,082 students; JAMES A. LONG ELEMENTARY SCHOOL is among them.

In terms of who attends, JAMES A. LONG ELEMENTARY SCHOOL shows that the largest single group is White at 52%, but no single group is in the majority; the rest breaks down as 37% Black, 6% Hispanic, 5% multiracial. That is meaningfully less White than the county at large, where the share is closer to 71%.

In terms of school funding signals, Staff filings list 30 full-time-equivalent teachers, which works out to roughly 18.8:1 students per teacher. Statewide, the average ratio sits near 17.5:1, putting JAMES A. LONG ELEMENTARY SCHOOL higher than the state norm the norm. An estimated 56% of students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, a commonly cited indicator of low-income enrollment.

Adjusting for the school's free-and-reduced-lunch share, JAMES A. LONG ELEMENTARY SCHOOL performs roughly as the BeatsExpectations model predicts for a school with this FRL share. The predicted value is around 52.9%, the actual is 44.6%, a residual of -8.3 points.

Around the school, Putnam County reports that median household earnings sit near $47,934, about 15% of the adult population holds a bachelor's degree or above, and census figures put the poverty rate at about 17%. Across Putnam County's 19 public schools (combined enrollment of about 10,082 students), JAMES A. LONG ELEMENTARY SCHOOL is one campus in the mix.

PUTNAM ACADEMY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES is the nearest neighboring public school, about 1.5 miles from this campus. 8 of the 8 nearest public schools sit inside a five-mile radius. On composite proficiency, JAMES A. LONG ELEMENTARY SCHOOL comes 3rd of 5 in the immediate cluster, beneath the nearby-schools average of 48.4%.

The campus sits in a town-based setting.

Trend over the last 7 years. JAMES A. LONG ELEMENTARY SCHOOL's enrollment has decreased 15% since 2018, when it stood at 668 (now 565). Over the same period, the White share decreased from 66% to 52%. Class-load math has rose: from 17.1:1 in 2018 to 18.8:1 in 2025.

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