Columbia Middle School

Columbia Middle School, an intimate middle school in Decatur, Georgia, run under DeKalb County, educates 571 students, covering grades 6 through 8. By comparison, Georgia's public schools average about 763 students each, so Columbia Middle School sits 25% leaner than that benchmark.

DeKalb County comprises 131 schools with combined enrollment of 92,088 students; Columbia Middle School is among them.

On the student-mix side, Columbia Middle School records that 90% of students identify as Black, making the school strongly Black-majority. The remainder looks like 5% Hispanic, 2% multiracial. That is visibly more Black than the county at large, where the share is closer to 51%.

On the resource side, On paper, Columbia Middle School has 49 full-time-equivalent teachers, translating to a class-load average of around 11.8:1. That figure is tighter than the state norm's 14.1:1 average. Around 100% of the student body qualifies for free or reduced-price meals, which schools and policymakers use as a rough income-mix signal. That share is noticeably above DeKalb County's rate of about 77%.

Adjusting for the school's free-and-reduced-lunch share, Columbia Middle School performs roughly as the BeatsExpectations model predicts for a school with this FRL share. The predicted value is around 25.7%, the actual is 12.1%, a residual of -13.6 points.

Around the school, ACS estimates for DeKalb County put the typical household earns roughly $80,644 per year, about 47% of the adult population holds a bachelor's degree or above, and the poverty rate sits near 10%. Across DeKalb County's 154 public schools (combined enrollment of about 102,960 students), Columbia Middle School is one campus in the mix.

The closest other public school is Bob Mathis Elementary School, roughly 0.9 miles away. Within five miles, there are 8 other public schools. On composite proficiency, Columbia Middle School comes 8th of 8 in the immediate cluster, beneath the nearby-schools average of 18.8%.

Geographically, the school is in a bedroom-community area.

Over the past 7-year window. Columbia Middle School's enrollment has shrank 37% since 2018, when it stood at 900 (now 571). Black enrollment moved from 95% to 90% across the same window. The student-to-teacher ratio narrowed from 13.9:1 in 2018 to 11.8:1 today.

Inside the community feed, the page collects discussion, questions, and updates around enrollment questions, classroom assignments, and PTA news. Members of the school community can share what they know.