Sebastian River Middle School — Sebastian, Florida

Sebastian River Middle School is the School District of Indian River County's grades 6 to 8 public school at 9400 County Road 512 in Sebastian, well inland from the Indian River Lagoon.

Sebastian River Middle School is the public middle school on the west side of Sebastian, run by the School District of Indian River County for grades 6 through 8. The National Center for Education Statistics lists its physical address as 9400 Fellsmere Rd, Sebastian, the same campus Vero News has printed as 9400 County Road 512 since at least a 2013 school profile. The two addresses describe one site: County Road 512 is Fellsmere Road, the road that runs west from Sebastian toward the city of Fellsmere, and the school stands on it well inland from the Indian River Lagoon and the riverfront.

The district runs four traditional middle schools. A January 2025 Vero News report on the K-8 plan named them as Gifford, Oslo, Storm Grove and Sebastian River, which makes the County Road 512 campus the only one of the four inside the Sebastian city limits. With Sebastian Elementary on Sebastian Boulevard and Sebastian River High School, it completes a public elementary, middle and high school sequence inside Sebastian, the K-12 pathway the high school pointed to when all three campuses won state recognition in 2024.

The 2013 profile recorded a 7:50 a.m. start, an 8:00 tardy bell and a 2:45 p.m. dismissal for that year. Bell times change from year to year, so the school calendar published by the district is the record for any current year. For scale, the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey 2020-2024 five-year estimates put the population of the City of Sebastian at 26,262, against 775 students on this one Sebastian campus.

Sebastian River Middle enrolled 775 students in grades 6 through 8 in the 2024-2025 school year, taught by 39 full-time-equivalent classroom teachers, according to NCES.

Federal data give the clearest picture of the student body. In the NCES Common Core of Data for the 2024-2025 school year, Sebastian River Middle School enrolled 775 students: 218 in sixth grade, 259 in seventh and 298 in eighth. The same record lists 39.00 full-time-equivalent classroom teachers and a student/teacher ratio of 19.87, and it counts 415 boys and 360 girls on the Sebastian campus.

The NCES race and ethnicity breakdown for 2024-2025 shows 341 White students, 307 Hispanic students, 93 Black students, 30 students of two or more races, 3 Asian students and 1 American Indian or Alaska Native student. Federal meal-program data in the same record count 431 students eligible for free lunch and 45 for reduced-price lunch, 476 in all, with 372 qualifying for free lunch through direct certification. NCES classifies the County Road 512 site as Rural, Fringe, its locale code for rural territory close to an urbanized area, which fits a campus on the western edge of Sebastian.

The grade counts matter for the years ahead because the district is changing how sixth grade is offered in the north county, covered below. Pelican Island Elementary, a few miles east in Sebastian, began adding middle grades in August 2025.

Sebastian River Middle is an International Baccalaureate school, runs a large choral program and holds the state Purple Star designation for serving military families.

Two programs have defined the school for more than a decade. The International Baccalaureate directory lists Sebastian River Middle School as an IB World School since 20 May 2011, the middle-years counterpart to the IB program at Sebastian River High School. And in August 2017 Sebastian Daily reported that Sebastian River Middle School had the largest graded choral curriculum of any middle or high school on the Treasure Coast, with three choirs for 160 singers: a 6th Grade Choir, a Concert Choir for seventh and eighth graders, and the auditioned SRMS Madrigal Singers.

In December 2024 the school joined Sebastian Elementary School and Sebastian River High School as Purple Star Schools of Distinction, according to Vero News. The three Sebastian campuses were among 176 Florida schools honored that month, and the designation lasts from the 2024-2025 through the 2026-2027 school years. The state created the Purple Star program in 2021 to recognize schools that support military-connected families; recognized activities include Month of the Military Child, Purple-Up! for Military Kids, Veterans Day and Memorial Day events and service projects. Because all three Sebastian schools hold it, a military family can stay inside a Purple Star sequence from kindergarten through twelfth grade without leaving Sebastian.

Students also turn up in county enrichment programs. In July 2025 Vero News listed Sebastian River Middle among the participants in ORCA's Data Jam, where students turned Indian River Lagoon science data into art and video projects, and in September 2023 Vero News photographed Sebastian River Middle School students with large inflatable donuts at the district's events honoring fathers. Athletics go back further: a 2011 Vero News item on district volunteers described fundraising for the SRMS Athletic Department, including volleyball uniforms.

The most detailed published Sebastian River Middle test snapshot, from June 2018, showed gains in 8th grade English, 8th grade math and civics.

School-level score reporting for the campus in local news is thin, and the most detailed published snapshot dates from 2018. In June 2018 Vero News reported that Sebastian River Middle 8th grade English language arts proficiency rose from 42 to 46 percent and 8th grade math from 38 to 44 percent, while civics proficiency at Sebastian River Middle School increased 4 percentage points, from 65 to 69 percent.

The district context has shifted since that release. In July 2025 Vero News reported that the School District of Indian River County earned a third straight A and rose to fifth among Florida's 67 districts, with every non-charter public school earning an A or a B and the district's middle school acceleration measure ranked second in the state, up from 56th in 2018-2019. For the current letter grade of the Sebastian campus itself, the Florida Department of Education school grades release is the official record.

Indian River County opens the Sebastian River Middle campus on County Road 512 as a public hurricane shelter, most recently during Hurricane Milton in October 2024.

Indian River County uses the Sebastian River Middle campus as a public hurricane shelter. Before Hurricane Irma in September 2017, Vero News published the county list with Sebastian River Middle School at 9400 County Road 512 among the regular shelters. The same 2017 list included two more Sebastian schools, Pelican Island Elementary School at 1355 Schumann Drive and Sebastian Elementary School at 400 County Road 512, so the County Road 512 corridor held two of the city's three school shelters. Two years later, as Hurricane Dorian approached in September 2019, Vero News listed it in Wave 1, the first group of shelters to open, alongside Fellsmere Elementary, the Vero Beach Freshman Learning Center and Oslo Middle School.

Hurricane Milton tested the arrangement in October 2024. The Sebastian shelter opened on Tuesday, Oct. 8, and Vero News reported that county officials closed the shelters at Sebastian River Middle School, Oslo Middle School and Fellsmere Elementary School about 2 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 10, after roughly 648 people had checked in across School District campuses. Of the three schools closed that afternoon, Sebastian River Middle was the only one inside Sebastian; the county's 2017 list gives Oslo Middle School a Vero Beach address on 20th Avenue SW and Fellsmere Elementary School an address on North Cypress Street in Fellsmere.

The campus also feeds children in summer. According to Vero News, in summer 2025 free breakfasts and lunches were provided at five schools, from Oslo Middle to Sebastian River Middle, plus six community sites, open to anyone 18 and under with no registration or income requirement.

Sebastian River Middle got a new principal in June 2026, while Sebastian Elementary, voted in 2025 to join its County Road 512 campus in August 2026, still operated at 400 Sebastian Blvd in October 2026.

Leadership changed in 2026. Sebastian Daily reported on June 10, 2026 that Robert Riskin, who previously served as principal of Sebastian River Middle School, was named principal of Sebastian River High School, effective June 1, and that Joy Griffin, previously an assistant principal at Vero Beach High School, moved into the principal's job at Sebastian River Middle ahead of the 2026-27 school year. The building has changed too: an August 2023 Vero News report on summer construction said Sebastian River Middle School would open a new wing for its students that fall.

The campus was also slated to change shape in August 2026. In December 2025 the School Board voted 5-0 for a districtwide consolidation under which Sebastian Elementary would share space with Sebastian River Middle School, with the changes taking effect in August 2026, according to Sebastian Daily. In June 2026 Vero News reported that Sebastian Elementary's students and faculty would move in with Sebastian River Middle on its campus, leaving the 41.1-acre Sebastian Elementary site at 400 Sebastian Blvd. empty.

The official record since then does not show that move at Sebastian River Middle. Its own website still advertises Grades 6-8 and an 8:10 am to 2:51 pm day, with no elementary grades (Sebastian River Middle School). Over at Sebastian Boulevard, the elementary school keeps 400 Sebastian Blvd in its site footer (Sebastian Elementary School of the Arts), and its calendar schedules the October 19, 2026 School Advisory Council meeting at that same address (school calendar). When Sebastian Daily listed the campus changes that did happen over the summer, on August 9, 2026, it named Glendale Elementary merged into Citrus Elementary and the Osceola and Rosewood magnet moves but left Sebastian Elementary off (Sebastian Daily).

The other shift is the district's K-8 plan. In January 2025 the School Board approved adding sixth grade in August 2025 at Pelican Island Elementary in Sebastian, which became the district's first non-religious classical-curriculum school, and at Fellsmere Elementary and the Rosewood and Osceola magnets, with one grade added each year until four full K-8 schools open for 2027-28. Vero News reported that Superintendent David Moore expected middle school enrollments to be noticeably smaller. Sixth through eighth graders at the K-8 schools can still play sports for the neighborhood middle school for which they are zoned, so Pelican Island and Fellsmere students may keep turning up on Sebastian River Middle teams even as they take classes elsewhere.