RISING LEADERS ACADEMY

RISING LEADERS ACADEMY is a K-12 campus of reasonably sized scale in PANAMA CITY, Florida, run under BAY, enrolling 311 students in grades K through 12.

Across the 47 schools in BAY (27,494 students total), RISING LEADERS ACADEMY accounts for its share of the district's footprint.

On demographics, RISING LEADERS ACADEMY shows that the most-represented group is White (52%), with the rest of the student body spread across multiple groups. Beyond that, the school lists 16% Hispanic, 16% Black, 9% multiracial, 6% Asian. By comparison, Bay County as a whole is about 75% White, so the school skews noticeably less White than its surroundings.

On the income-and-resources front, Staff filings list 20 full-time-equivalent teachers, which works out to roughly 15.6:1 students per teacher. That figure is tighter than the state norm's 17.7:1 average. An estimated 32% of students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, which schools and policymakers use as a rough income-mix signal. That share is noticeably below Bay County's rate of about 43%.

On a residual basis (actual vs predicted given the student mix), RISING LEADERS ACADEMY tracks the demographic baseline. The model predicts 65.2% given the school's FRL share; actual proficiency is 72.4%.

Around the school, Bay County reports that the typical household earns roughly $73,533 per year, about 30% of the adult population holds a bachelor's degree or above, and census figures put the poverty rate at about 8%. Across Bay County's 50 public schools (combined enrollment of about 27,672 students), RISING LEADERS ACADEMY is one campus in the mix.

ST. ANDREW SCHOOL AT OAKLAND TERRACE is the nearest neighboring public school, about 0.4 miles from this campus. Within five miles, there are 8 other public schools. On composite proficiency, RISING LEADERS ACADEMY comes 2nd of 4 in the immediate cluster, ahead of the nearby-schools average of 62.5%.

RISING LEADERS ACADEMY operates from an urban location. RISING LEADERS ACADEMY is a charter school, which puts it inside the public-school system but outside the standard district-managed model.

Over the past 7-year window. RISING LEADERS ACADEMY's enrollment has increased 66% since 2018, when it stood at 187 (now 311). Over the same period, the White share contracted from 65% to 52%. Class-load math has rose: from 13.4:1 in 2018 to 15.6:1 in 2025.

On allk12, members of the RISING LEADERS ACADEMY community share and discuss science fair prep, picture-day reminders, and bus-route questions. Anyone with firsthand experience at this school can post or comment.