Rice Avenue MS

As a tight-knit middle-grades school in Girard, Pennsylvania, Rice Avenue MS instructs 443 students from grades 5 through 8, one of the schools within Girard SD. By comparison, Pennsylvania's public schools average about 594 students each, so Rice Avenue MS sits 25% smaller than that benchmark.

Across the 3 schools in Girard SD (1,446 students total), Rice Avenue MS accounts for its share of the district's footprint.

Looking at the student body, Rice Avenue MS records that the student body is overwhelmingly White (91%). Beyond that, the school shows 4% multiracial, 3% Hispanic. By comparison, Erie County as a whole is about 83% White, so the school skews considerably more White than its surroundings.

In terms of school funding signals, On paper, Rice Avenue MS has 41 full-time-equivalent teachers, translating to a class-load average of around 10.9:1. Statewide, the average ratio sits near 13.2:1, putting Rice Avenue MS tighter than the state norm the norm. An estimated 100% of students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, a commonly cited indicator of low-income enrollment. Set against Erie County (around 74%), the school's rate is meaningfully above typical.

After controlling for student poverty, Rice Avenue MS ranks in the top 10% of Pennsylvania public schools. The BeatsExpectations model, a per-state regression of composite proficiency on FRL share, predicts schools with this student profile to land around 34.5%; Rice Avenue MS posts 56.7%, +22.2 points above that line.

In the broader community, the surrounding county (Erie County) records that the typical household earns roughly $63,354 per year, 30% of adults hold a bachelor's degree or higher, and census figures put the poverty rate at about 10%. In all, Erie County runs 68 public schools (combined enrollment of about 35,738 students), of which Rice Avenue MS is one.

Nearest neighbor: Girard HS, around 0.2 miles off. Counting just inside five miles, 6 other public schools cluster around Rice Avenue MS. On composite proficiency, Rice Avenue MS comes 5th of 6 in the immediate cluster, beneath the nearby-schools average of 67.4%.

The campus sits in an outer-ring setting.

Over the past 7-year window. Looking back 7 years, enrollment at Rice Avenue MS has fell 13%, going from 508 students in 2018 to 443 in 2025. The student-to-teacher ratio pulled in from 14.3:1 in 2018 to 10.9:1 today.

On the community side, posts here usually surface around sports schedules, lunch menu changes, and school spirit week. Anyone with firsthand experience at this school can post or comment.