Black Mountain Elementary

Black Mountain Elementary operates as a micro-enrollment K-5 school in Black Mountain, North Carolina, one of the schools within Buncombe County Schools. Current enrollment sits at 163 students spanning grades 4 through 5. By comparison, North Carolina's public schools average about 467 students each, so Black Mountain Elementary sits 65% leaner than that benchmark.

Black Mountain Elementary is one of 45 schools operated by Buncombe County Schools, a district that teaches 22,452 students overall.

On demographics, Black Mountain Elementary records that 83% of students identify as White, making the school strongly White-majority. Other groups include 7% Hispanic, 6% multiracial, 4% Black. That mix tracks the wider county fairly closely.

On the resource side, The school reports having 11 full-time-equivalent teachers, for a student-teacher ratio near 15.3:1. The state averages about 14.9:1, putting this campus right in line with peers. Roughly 97% of students at Black Mountain Elementary qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, often used as a Title I proxy. By comparison, Buncombe County runs at roughly 88%, so the school's eligibility rate is meaningfully above the surrounding baseline.

Adjusting for the school's free-and-reduced-lunch share, Black Mountain Elementary performs roughly as the BeatsExpectations model predicts for a school with this FRL share. The predicted value is around 49.2%, the actual is 58.3%, a residual of +9.1 points.

Around the school, the surrounding county (Buncombe County) shows that the typical household earns roughly $74,436 per year, roughly 46% of adults have completed at least a four-year degree, and roughly 6% of residents live below the federal poverty line. Across Buncombe County's 61 public schools (combined enrollment of about 29,908 students), Black Mountain Elementary is one campus in the mix.

The closest other public school is Black Mountain Primary, roughly 0.2 miles away. Counting just inside five miles, 3 other public schools cluster around Black Mountain Elementary. Among the 7 schools in that immediate cluster with test data (this one included), Black Mountain Elementary ranks 3rd on composite proficiency, above the local average of 52.4%.

Black Mountain Elementary operates from a residential location.

Over the past 7-year window. Over the past 7-year window, the student count shrank 27%: 222 students in 2018 compared to 163 in 2025.

Inside the community feed, members of the Black Mountain Elementary community share and discuss pickup logistics, teacher feedback, and after-school programs. Members of the school community can share what they know.