Sweetwater Elementary School

As an intimate elementary-level community in Lithia Springs, Georgia, Sweetwater Elementary School educates 473 students from grades pre-K through 5, part of Douglas County. By comparison, Georgia's public schools average about 605 students each, so Sweetwater Elementary School sits 22% leaner than that benchmark.

Sweetwater Elementary School is one of 35 schools operated by Douglas County, a district that instructs 25,521 students overall.

On the student-mix side, Sweetwater Elementary School reports that the most-represented group is Black (53%), with the rest of the student body spread across multiple groups; the rest comes out to 33% Hispanic, 9% White, 4% multiracial. That mix tracks the wider county fairly closely.

On the income-and-resources front, The school lists 33 full-time-equivalent teachers, for a student-teacher ratio near 14.6:1. The state averages around 13.3:1, so this campus is higher than the state norm typical. About 88% of enrolled students meet the income threshold for free or reduced-price lunch, which schools and policymakers use as a rough income-mix signal. By comparison, Douglas County runs at roughly 71%, so the school's eligibility rate is meaningfully above the surrounding baseline.

On a residual basis (actual vs predicted given the student mix), Sweetwater Elementary School performs roughly as the BeatsExpectations model predicts for a school with this FRL share. The predicted value is around 31.9%, the actual is 26.3%, a residual of -5.6 points.

In the area at large, the surrounding county (Douglas County) reports that the typical household earns roughly $82,984 per year, about 31% of the adult population holds a bachelor's degree or above, and census figures put the poverty rate at about 9%. Across Douglas County's 37 public schools (combined enrollment of about 26,121 students), Sweetwater Elementary School is one campus in the mix.

Nearest neighbor: Lithia Springs Comprehensive High School, around 0.2 miles off. Counting just inside five miles, 8 other public schools cluster around Sweetwater Elementary School. Ranking that nearby cluster on reported proficiency puts Sweetwater Elementary School at 6th of 8; the average score across the group is 28.2%.

The school occupies a residential site.

Over the past 7-year window. Over the past 7-year window, the student count declined 17%: 570 students in 2018 compared to 473 in 2025. The White share of enrollment contracted from 16% to 9% over that span. Class-load math has tightened: from 16.1:1 in 2018 to 14.6:1 in 2025.

In the discussion threads here, the page collects discussion, questions, and updates around open house dates, ride-share offers, and field-trip permission slips. Contributors range from current parents to recent graduates and teachers.