The top reported proficiency rate is 52% in English language arts. The lowest is 44% in Math.
Original Research by School Decision on Rsu 37/msad 37
RSU 37, also known as MSAD 37, is a small rural district in Washington County, Maine, serving students from prekindergarten through twelfth grade across four schools. The district includes three elementary schools spread among the communities of Addison, Columbia, Harrington, and Milbridge, with Narraguagus High School serving as the secondary destination for all of them. The total enrollment sits in the modest range typical of Downeast Maine districts, with each grade band carrying roughly comparable class sizes from prekindergarten through senior year.
The student body is predominantly white, with a meaningful Hispanic presence that stands out for this part of the state. A small number of students identify as multiracial, and a handful come from other racial or ethnic backgrounds. The district did not report free-or-reduced-price lunch counts, special education rates, or English learner figures in the data we received, so families wanting a picture of economic disadvantage or specialized services will need to ask the district directly. Those gaps are common in small rural systems and do not by themselves signal anything about service quality.
On the most recent Maine Through Year Assessment, students in grades three through eight performed at a moderate level. English language arts results were slightly stronger than mathematics, with a touch over half of tested students meeting proficiency in reading and writing. Math results landed below that mark, with somewhat fewer than half reaching proficiency. We looked for science assessment results and found they were not reported for this district, so no read on science is available. No multi-year trend data was provided, which means we cannot say whether these results are improving, declining, or holding steady. A parent evaluating academic trajectory may want to ask the district for longitudinal results and any grade-by-grade or school-by-school breakdowns, since the district-level summary alone does not show where the stronger and weaker pockets sit.
Graduation rate data was not available in the materials we received. For a district with a single high school, the graduation cohort is small, and families should contact Narraguagus High School or the district office for the most recent class completion figures. We also found no data on advanced coursework, career and technical education pathways, dual enrollment, or extracurricular offerings. Whether the district provides AP classes, early college options, or vocational programs through regional partnerships is something a parent would need to verify directly, since the program data we looked for was absent.
The housing market across the district's communities is affordable by any standard. Weighted home values across the five ZIP codes the district touches sit well below both the Maine state benchmark and the national one, making this one of the more accessible entry points to homeownership in the state. That said, values have been drifting downward recently, a modest year-over-year decline that reflects the broader economic pressures on rural Downeast communities rather than a single local event. Estimated monthly mortgage costs remain low relative to most of Maine, and the price-to-income ratio is favorable. Rental data was not available. Families considering a move here should understand that the housing stock is modest, the market is thin, and the local economy has limited employment diversity, with unemployment hovering in the low-to-mid single digits.
We searched for recent district-level changes such as referendums, curriculum updates, property tax shifts, or leadership transitions and found nothing notable in publicly available sources. The district appears to be operating steadily without major disruptions or restructuring in recent years. No strategic priorities or improvement plans surfaced in our research.
For a family weighing this district, the appeal is clear: a small, community-rooted school system in an affordable coastal-rural corner of Washington County, where class sizes are small and the four schools keep students close to home through high school. The trade-off is that program breadth, specialized services, and reported outcomes data are thinner than what larger or better-resourced districts can offer. The academic results that are available are middling, neither alarming nor standout, and the gaps in science, graduation, and program data mean a family will need to do some direct asking to fill out the picture before committing.
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