JOSEPH WILLIAMS ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

JOSEPH WILLIAMS ELEMENTARY SCHOOL, a compact elementary-level community in GAINESVILLE, Florida, overseen by ALACHUA, serves 398 students, covering grades K through 5. That puts it 34% leaner than the typical public school in Florida, which averages around 604 students.

Within ALACHUA, which oversees 60 schools and 28,255 students, JOSEPH WILLIAMS ELEMENTARY SCHOOL is one campus in the system.

On the student-mix side, JOSEPH WILLIAMS ELEMENTARY SCHOOL reports that 82% of students identify as Black, making the school strongly Black-majority. Beyond that, the school logs 8% multiracial, 5% White, 3% Hispanic. That is considerably more Black than the county at large, where the share is closer to 19%.

Looking at the economic backdrop, On paper, JOSEPH WILLIAMS ELEMENTARY SCHOOL has 27 full-time-equivalent teachers, translating to a class-load average of around 14.7:1. That figure is tighter than the state norm's 17.5:1 average. About 82% of enrolled students meet the income threshold for free or reduced-price lunch, which schools and policymakers use as a rough income-mix signal. Set against Alachua County (around 48%), the school's rate is noticeably above typical.

After controlling for student poverty, JOSEPH WILLIAMS ELEMENTARY SCHOOL performs roughly as the BeatsExpectations model predicts for a school with this FRL share. The predicted value is around 40.0%, the actual is 35.6%, a residual of -4.4 points.

Zooming out to the county, ACS estimates for Alachua County put the typical household earns roughly $61,949 per year, roughly 49% of adults have completed at least a four-year degree, and the poverty rate sits near 11%. In all, Alachua County runs 68 public schools (combined enrollment of about 29,618 students), of which JOSEPH WILLIAMS ELEMENTARY SCHOOL is one.

The closest other public school is ABRAHAM LINCOLN MIDDLE SCHOOL, roughly 0.2 miles away. Counting just inside five miles, 8 other public schools cluster around JOSEPH WILLIAMS ELEMENTARY SCHOOL. Among the 5 schools in that immediate cluster with test data (this one included), JOSEPH WILLIAMS ELEMENTARY SCHOOL ranks 4th on composite proficiency, behind the local average of 51.9%.

Geographically, the school is in a metropolitan area.

Five-year trend. Over the past 7-year window, the student count shrank 32%: 583 students in 2018 compared to 398 in 2025. The Asian share of enrollment contracted from 11% to 1% over that span. The student-to-teacher ratio pulled in from 15.8:1 in 2018 to 14.7:1 today.

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