The top reported proficiency rate is 57% in Science. The lowest is 31% in Math.
Original Research by School Decision on Lempster School District
Lempster School District is a small, single-school district in Sullivan County, New Hampshire, serving children from pre-kindergarten through eighth grade. The only school in the district is Lempster Community School. This is a rural community where the school functions as a local institution, and the enrollment is modest enough that each grade level holds roughly a dozen or fewer students. The student body is predominantly white, with a small number of Hispanic and Asian students. Because the district ends at eighth grade, there is no graduation rate, no high school course catalog, and no AP or dual-credit data to review. Students presumably transition to a regional or neighboring high school for grades nine through twelve, though the data provided does not specify which one.
State assessment results from the New Hampshire SAS tell a mixed story, and they need to be read with the understanding that each grade's results reflect only about ten tested students. In English language arts, proficiency ranges from strong in third grade and eighth grade to quite low in fourth grade, with middle grades landing in the middle. The district-wide ELA proficiency rate sits just below half. Mathematics is the weaker subject across the board. Third grade starts at a moderately proficient level, but grades four through eight all show low proficiency, with seventh grade being the lowest. The district-wide math proficiency rate is well below the ELA figure. Science results are available only for eighth grade, where a slim majority reached proficiency. Fifth-grade science and fifth-grade results generally were suppressed, with no students reported as tested in that grade for those subjects.
The wide swings from grade to grade are a natural feature of a district this small, where one or two students moving the needle changes the proficiency picture substantially. A parent looking at these results may want to ask the school how it tracks cohort progress over time, since year-to-year grade-level comparisons in a district of this size can look volatile without necessarily reflecting a trend. We looked for multi-year trend data but found only a single year available, so there is no way to tell from the provided data whether these results are improving, declining, or holding steady.
Several data categories that would help round out the picture are absent. Free and reduced-price lunch counts are missing, so the economic profile of the student body relative to the community is not available from school-level data. Special education and English learner rates are also missing. No civil-rights or discipline data was provided. No program offerings, course-access details, or staffing information was included. We looked for a district brief on budget votes or strategic priorities but found no content there. The comparison fact-set that would position Lempster among its county neighbors was not available, so this account stands on the district's own numbers alone.
On the housing side, the community context is limited but the market data is present. Home values in the district area are below both the New Hampshire state benchmark and the national benchmark, and the price-to-income ratio is moderate. Mortgage costs are in line with current interest rates. No rental market data was available for the area. For a family considering a move here, housing is relatively accessible by New Hampshire standards, though the area is rural and amenities may require travel to nearby towns.
What Lempster offers is a very small, locally rooted elementary and middle school experience in a rural setting where housing costs are manageable. The academic picture is uneven, with English language arts showing more strength than mathematics, and the tiny class sizes mean that results can shift noticeably from one grade to the next. Families for whom a small, close-knit environment matters and who are comfortable supplementing or monitoring math progress may find it a reasonable fit. Those seeking broader program offerings, specialized services, or larger peer groups will likely need to look beyond what this single small school can provide.
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