Original Research by School Decision on Selfridge 8
Selfridge 8 is a very small public school district in Sioux County, North Dakota, serving students from pre-kindergarten through twelfth grade across two schools, Selfridge Elementary and Selfridge High School. The enrollment is tiny by any standard, with just a handful of students per grade, which means children here grow up in classrooms where everyone knows everyone and where a single family's decision to enroll or withdraw can visibly shift the character of a grade. The district serves a predominantly American Indian and Alaska Native student body, with a small number of students identifying as white or Black. Free-or-reduced-price lunch data, special education rates, and English learner figures were not available, so the economic picture of the student population cannot be characterized from what was provided.
State assessment results come from the 2017-18 school year, the only year reported here. That was a transition year for North Dakota's test, with both the assessment name and proficiency cut scores changing, so the state flags these results as not comparable to prior years and trends cannot be read from them. In that single year, science proficiency stood out as the relative bright spot, landing in a moderate-to-strong range. Math proficiency fell in a lower-moderate band, and English language arts was the softest area, with proficiency in a low range. Participation was reported at a level that suggests most but not all students sat for the exam. Because the tested cohort is so small and the data is several years old, a parent may want to ask the district for more recent results before drawing firm conclusions. No graduation rate, ACT or SAT scores, or college-readiness metrics were provided.
The housing market around Selfridge is among the most affordable in the state. Home values sit well below the North Dakota benchmark and far below national levels, with a typical home costing a small fraction of what a comparable property would in most of the country. Year-over-year values have been rising, but from a very low base. The price-to-income ratio suggests that for local wage earners, ownership is within reach relative to many parts of the state, though the data does not give a local median income specific to this community. Rental data was not available. The county sits in a rural part of western North Dakota, near the South Dakota border, and the housing data draws on zip codes tied to Lemmon and McLaughlin, small towns in the surrounding area.
No locale brief was provided for the community itself, so details about local amenities, employers, or distance to larger services are absent here. The district brief turned up no recent parent-relevant changes such as referendums, curriculum shifts, or staffing announcements. Program offerings, course access, Advanced Placement or dual-credit options, career pathways, extracurriculars, and civil-rights data such as discipline or harassment reports were not available. Staffing figures were also absent. A parent considering this district should know that the public data picture is thin, which is common for a district this size in a rural setting, but it also means many of the questions a family might ask about daily school life will need to come from direct conversation with school leadership.
What the data does say is this: Selfridge 8 is a close-knit, rural district serving almost entirely Native American students in one of the most affordable housing markets in the state, with a single year of state test results that showed strength in science and real difficulty in reading. The small scale is the defining feature, shaping everything from peer relationships to what programming is feasible. Families drawn to that kind of environment, and willing to seek out the missing information directly, will find a district that looks very different from almost any other in the state.
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