Gardner Park Elementary

As a moderately sized elementary-level community in Gastonia, North Carolina, Gardner Park Elementary educates 560 students from grades pre-K through 5, part of Gaston County Schools.

Within Gaston County Schools, which oversees 56 schools and 30,995 students, Gardner Park Elementary is one campus in the system.

On demographics, Gardner Park Elementary reports that 34% of students identify as Hispanic, with the remaining enrollment distributed across several groups; the rest consists of 33% Black, 23% White, 8% multiracial. That is noticeably more Hispanic than the county at large, where the share is closer to 10%.

On the resource side, Gardner Park Elementary reports 39 full-time-equivalent teachers, putting the student-to-teacher ratio at about 14.5:1. That tracks the state average closely. Roughly 99% of students at Gardner Park Elementary qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, often used as a Title I proxy. Set against Gaston County (around 85%), the school's rate is noticeably above typical.

After controlling for student poverty, Gardner Park Elementary performs roughly as the BeatsExpectations model predicts for a school with this FRL share. The predicted value is around 48.5%, the actual is 40.7%, a residual of -7.8 points.

In the broader community, community-level numbers for Gaston County indicate median household income runs about $67,478, about 27% of the adult population holds a bachelor's degree or above, and census figures put the poverty rate at about 10%. In all, Gaston County runs 61 public schools (combined enrollment of about 35,898 students), of which Gardner Park Elementary is one.

Nearest neighbor: Ashbrook High, around 0.6 miles off. 8 of the 8 nearest public schools sit inside a five-mile radius. On composite proficiency, Gardner Park Elementary comes 3rd of 7 in the immediate cluster, below the nearby-schools average of 44.4%.

Gardner Park Elementary operates from a high-density location.

Over the past 7-year window. Gardner Park Elementary's enrollment has contracted 11% since 2018, when it stood at 627 (now 560). The White share of enrollment declined from 30% to 23% over that span. The student-to-teacher ratio pulled in from 17.5:1 in 2018 to 14.5:1 today.

Within the allk12 community for this school, posts here usually surface around fundraisers, lost-and-found posts, and report-card season. Contributors range from current parents to recent graduates and teachers.