The state Department of Education’s disclosure on Wednesday that Center Avenue Elementary School is one of the lowest-achieving elementary schools in the state prompts obvious questions.

They include:

(1) How did it get that way?

(2) While the situation was evolving, why wasn’t it addressed?

(3) Could the announcement be an error?

(4) If the finding is in fact accurate, how responsible is the learning environment in some Southside households, and, specifically, how much are parents directly responsible for children’s low school performance?

(5) What has been the morale of teachers and the school’s administration, and how much has it affected the way they do their jobs?

(6) Were concerns about negative performance at the school — besides overall district finances — any factor when the Butler School Board initiated discussions about possibly closing the school after the 2012-13 school year?

Superintendent Michael Strutt said that he’s at a loss to explain how the school received such a low ranking — ending up in the bottom 15 percent of elementary schools statewide.

The ranking is based on students’ combined reading and math scores from the 2010-11 Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA) testing.

Strutt pointed out that over the past four years, the school received what are dubbed Keystone Awards for progress.

He said the school never was placed on a warning list or told to develop a school improvement plan.

Students at Center Avenue achieved PSSA Annual Yearly Progress goals.

Mistake or not, for the 2012-13 school year, any of the school’s 209 students whose family meets income guidelines are eligible to apply for a state-funded scholarship to attend a different school, public or private.

The announcement has placed a stigma on the Center Avenue staff, since other Butler School District elementary schools such as Emily Brittain, Broad Street and Center Township have won recognition for their students’ excellent progress.

The task at hand for the school board and district administrators is to get to the bottom of this unwanted development. It’s to be hoped that state education officials did in fact err and that a corrective announcement will be forthcoming quickly.

But if not, the Butler School District has a troubling situation at hand — a situation it should prepare itself to discuss openly with the community.