Original Research by School Decision on Bloomfield Elem
Bloomfield Elem is a tiny rural school district in Dawson County, Montana, serving pre-kindergarten through eighth grade. The district consists of a single school, Bloomfield School, and its enrollment is very small, with most students in the early and middle elementary grades. The student body is predominantly white, with a small American Indian or Alaska Native population represented. Data on the share of students who qualify for free or reduced-price lunch was not available, so it is not possible to report that measure from the evidence provided.
State testing results for the most recent school year are suppressed, meaning the numbers are not reported publicly. Montana recently changed the name of its state assessment and adjusted cut scores for both math and English language arts, which makes comparisons to prior years problematic. Science testing data is also missing. For a district this small, missing results are an expected consequence of having too few test-takers to report, not a weak or strong signal about performance. A parent who wants a sense of academic standing would need to discuss this directly with the school.
The district has no graduation rate because it does not serve high school grades. Students who finish eighth grade at Bloomfield School move on to a high school elsewhere, and the available data does not indicate where they typically go or what their outcomes look like.
Chronic absenteeism stands at a rate that is above the midpoint among Dawson County's districts. Given the very small enrollment, a handful of students who miss a lot of school can produce a rate that looks high in percentage terms. A parent may want to ask the school about attendance patterns and what support is in place for any student who struggles with regular attendance.
Per-pupil current spending falls in the middle range, in the upper half of the county's districts. That reflects the reality that a very small school has fixed costs spread across a small number of students, so spending per student tends to run higher than in larger districts.
Housing values in the area are well below the state median and the national median, with the weighted district value pulled in different directions by the various zip codes that feed into the school. The S-curve of home prices in the contributing areas ranges from lower to moderately higher, but generally the market is affordable compared to much of the rest of the state. The area's median household income is below the national median, and mortgage rates at the time of this data were just over 6 percent, which sets a typical monthly payment at about what a median-income household in the area could manage without being stretched.
Publicly reported information about recent district changes was not found. This is a very small rural district with a single teacher and a handful of students, and it does not appear to have undergone the kinds of referendums, curriculum shifts, or property tax changes that would generate news coverage. That absence is consistent with what one would expect for a district of this size and profile.
This is a school that fits a family looking for an extremely small, community-rooted setting where their child would be well known to every adult in the building. The peer group is small, and the range of academic pathways is naturally limited by the size of the operation. A parent would want to confirm directly with the school what the transition plan looks like for eighth graders heading into high school, as well as any enrichment opportunities available within the district or through cooperative arrangements with neighboring districts.
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