The top reported proficiency rate is 50% in Math. The lowest is 44% in Science.
Original Research by School Decision on Faith School District 46-2
Faith School District 46-2 is a small, rural public district in northwestern South Dakota centered on the town of Faith and the surrounding area of Perkins County. It operates four schools: Maurine Elementary, Faith Elementary, Faith Jr. High, and Faith High School, covering pre-kindergarten through twelfth grade. The enrollment is small, with roughly a dozen to two dozen students per grade level, which means children here grow up in a tight-knit academic setting where teachers and families tend to know one another across all the grades. The student body is predominantly white, with small numbers of American Indian or Alaska Native students and students of other backgrounds. Data on free or reduced-price lunch, special education enrollment, and English learners was not available, so those pieces of the picture are gaps a parent would need to ask the district about directly.
On state assessments for the most recent school year, the district reported full participation, which is a positive sign for a small rural system where test-day logistics can be challenging. Math proficiency among third through eighth graders landed at about half of tested students, a solid result. English language arts was slightly below that, and science trailed a bit further. These are moderate results for a district of this size, and the science figure is the one a parent may want to look into further with the school, though the small number of tested students in science means a few individual scores can swing the overall proportion considerably. No multi-year trend data was available, so it is hard to say whether these results represent a stable pattern or year-to-year variation. Average scale scores were also not reported.
The housing market in the Faith area is modest by both state and national standards. Typical home values sit well below the South Dakota statewide benchmark and further below the national figure, though values have been appreciating at a faster pace recently than either the state or the country as a whole. For families considering a move, this means the entry price for housing is relatively accessible, and the price-to-income ratio suggests that a household earning near the national median income could manage a purchase here more comfortably than in many parts of the country. Estimated monthly mortgage costs at current rates are moderate. No rental data was available for the area, so renters would need to look locally for current availability and pricing.
The district brief turned up no recent referenda, curriculum overhauls, tax shifts, or other changes that would clear a lasting-impact threshold. What was found amounted to demographic and fiscal profile snapshots, which is consistent with a small district where major policy shifts are rare and governance tends to be steady. A parent looking for signs of strategic direction or new program initiatives would not find much in the public record and might do best to ask the district directly.
Several categories of information that families often rely on were simply not available in the data provided. There is no graduation rate, no course access or program listing, no staffing or class-size detail, no attendance or discipline data, and no civil-rights reporting. Some of this reflects the nature of a very small district where certain reporting requirements produce limited or non-public detail, and some may reflect that the district falls below thresholds for particular data collections. A reader should not treat these gaps as weaknesses but should recognize that the public data trail here is thinner than it would be for a larger district.
What the picture does show is a small, stable rural district with decent elementary and middle-grade assessment results, full test participation, an accessible housing market, and no recent upheaval in governance or programming. For a family seeking a quiet, community-rooted education in a low-cost part of South Dakota, Faith offers that setting. For a family wanting a broad array of specialized programs, detailed performance trend lines, or extensive extracurricular and course offerings, the available data does not show those features, and the district's size suggests they may be limited. Asking the district directly about what it offers beyond the tested grades would be the logical next step.
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