Original Research by School Decision on Harrison High School
Harrison High School serves grades nine through twelve in Colorado Springs, part of the Harrison School District. The school occupies a spot in the city’s sprawling, car-dependent landscape, where military installations and defense contractors anchor the economy and residential neighborhoods spread across a high-desert plateau. A parent navigating the area will find the school on Janitell Road, accessible by car from the arterials and Interstate 25 that lace this large, fast-growing city.
The student body is predominantly Hispanic, with White students the next largest group, followed by Black students, and smaller numbers of students who are Asian, two or more races, American Indian or Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander. A substantial share of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. The enrollment is of a size typical of a comprehensive high school in this region, with more than two hundred students in each grade. This is a regular public school, not a charter or magnet.
No state testing data appears for Harrison High School. The school’s performance profile is therefore not something a parent can evaluate from the standard metrics that reliably appear for high schools in Colorado. This absence may reflect the nature of the school or the timing of reporting, but without the data in hand, a parent will want to ask the school directly about its academic performance and how students fare on state assessments. For the same reason, the comparison that positions this school relative to other districts in El Paso County could not include proficiency, graduation rate, or chronic absenteeism—gaps that leave a family without the usual benchmarks.
The district itself has taken at least one notable step that could matter to a family considering this high school. In late 2024, voters approved a mill levy that funds the D2 Promise Program, which provides free college tuition and fees at Pikes Peak State College for all qualifying district high school graduates. This is a concrete financial pathway for students who want to pursue a two-year degree after high school, and it is an unusual offering that directly addresses the cost of college. A parent should confirm how the program works, what qualifies as good standing, and how it integrates with the school’s counseling and course selection.
The school’s setting in Colorado Springs means students are part of a city that blends military life, aerospace and defense employment, tourism, and a steady inflow of new residents. The city has grown substantially over recent decades, and the housing market reflects that demand: home values are near the state benchmark, and rents have been rising. The area offers the typical amenities of a mid-sized western city—Garden of the Gods, the Olympic Training Center, a downtown with museums—but the day-to-day reality is a car-oriented environment with few walkable nodes. Getting to and from school requires transportation.
A parent evaluating Harrison High School will find a school with a high-need student population, a district commitment to making college more affordable through the D2 Promise, and a blank slate when it comes to the academic performance data that most families use to size up a school. That absence of testing and graduation data is the most pressing reason to engage the school directly and ask for the information a family would need to make a decision.
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