Original Research by School Decision on Laredo R-vii
Laredo R-VII is a very small public school district in Grundy County, Missouri, serving only pre-kindergarten through eighth grade. This grade configuration means families with high-school-aged children must look elsewhere, as the district itself provides no high school program. For those who continue with Laredo past eighth grade, the district has entered into a publicly reported tuition-sharing agreement with neighboring Spickard R-II that allows Spickard's high school students to attend classes in Laredo, with the two districts splitting the cost. This arrangement expands what would otherwise be a limited upper-grade option.
The district’s size is its defining characteristic. With a small total enrollment, it operates a single school, Laredo Elementary. The student body is overwhelmingly White, with a very small number of Black students and an even smaller number of Hispanic students represented. The district’s small scale means that class sizes are extremely small, and each teacher works with a very limited number of students in each grade. Data on the share of students who qualify for free or reduced-price lunch is not available.
Because the district serves no tested high school grades, it has no graduation rate. State testing data for the grades it does serve—third through eighth—was suppressed for the most recent school year. Suppression typically occurs when the number of students tested is too small to report publicly without risking individual student identification. A parent or resident will not find a public record of how the district’s students performed on the Missouri Assessment Program in math, English language arts, or science for that year. This is a direct result of the very low enrollment; there is no way to gauge academic proficiency from the state’s published results.
On measures where comparison data among Grundy County’s districts is available, Laredo R-VII stands out in a couple of areas. Its chronic absenteeism rate is very low, ranking in the top quartile among the county’s four districts, meaning students are in school consistently. Its per-pupil spending, however, is in the upper range when set against the same group, which is a characteristic often found in very small rural districts where fixed costs are spread over a tiny student body.
Housing values in the communities that make up the district, including the town of Trenton and the smaller village of Chula, are well below the state and national benchmarks. The weighted home value across the district’s zip codes is notably lower than the Missouri average, and the national average is higher still. This points to a relatively affordable housing market, though the data covers a broad area and does not provide a single number for the immediate Laredo community itself.
For a family considering this district, the picture is one of extreme familiarity and small scale. The student peer group is small and racially homogeneous. There is no public record of recent test performance, and no high school program. The tuition-sharing agreement offers a path for high school, but it is a partnership, not a traditional four-year high school experience within the district. A parent may want to ask the school directly about academic outcomes that are not publicly reported, and to understand exactly how the high school arrangement with Spickard works in practice, including transportation and course offerings.
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