Southwest MS

Located at 300 Chestnut St, in Reading, Pennsylvania, Southwest MS is a medium-sized middle school that instructs 574 students (grades 5 through 8), operated by Reading SD.

Within Reading SD, which oversees 19 schools and 16,423 students, Southwest MS is one campus in the system.

Demographically, Southwest MS shows that 87% of students identify as Hispanic, making the school strongly Hispanic-majority; the rest breaks down as 7% Black, 5% White. By comparison, Berks County as a whole is about 25% Hispanic, so the school skews noticeably more Hispanic than its surroundings.

Looking at the economic backdrop, Southwest MS reports 48 full-time-equivalent teachers, putting the student-to-teacher ratio at about 12.0:1. That figure is tighter than the state norm's 13.2:1 average. About 114% of enrolled students meet the income threshold for free or reduced-price lunch, a commonly cited indicator of low-income enrollment. By comparison, Berks County runs at roughly 67%, so the school's eligibility rate is meaningfully above the surrounding baseline.

In the surrounding community, community-level numbers for Berks County indicate median household income runs about $79,777, roughly 28% of adults have completed at least a four-year degree, and census figures put the poverty rate at about 9%. Southwest MS is one of 95 public schools in Berks County (combined enrollment of about 62,375 students).

Tyson-Schoener El Sch is the nearest neighboring public school, about 0.2 miles from this campus. Counting just inside five miles, 8 other public schools cluster around Southwest MS.

The school occupies an inner-city site.

Inside the community feed, posts here usually surface around open house dates, ride-share offers, and field-trip permission slips. Anyone with firsthand experience at this school can post or comment.