Original Research by School Decision on Kim Undivided High School
Kim Undivided High School is a small public school serving grades six through twelve in the town of Kim, Colorado, a very small rural statutory town on the southeastern Colorado plains. With a population that has long numbered in the dozens, Kim is a dispersed agricultural community where the K-12 school, a post office, and a general store are the town’s primary institutions. The school sits within the town itself and functions as a central civic anchor. The area is near the Comanche National Grassland, and ranching and farming are the dominant local economic activities. The school district, Kim Reorganized School District No. 88, operates the single school that covers the full range of grades.
The school’s student body is very small, reflecting the size of the community it serves. Its enrollment draws from the town and the surrounding rural area. A notable share of students are Hispanic, and the remaining majority are white, with a small number of multiracial students also enrolled. Around a sixth of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, a measure of household economic need. Data on students with disabilities and English learners was not reported in the available records, so a parent would want to contact the school directly about those programs.
State testing results were suppressed for the most recent school year, meaning that the reported student counts in the tested grades were too small to meet state thresholds for public reporting. This is a routine occurrence for a school of this size. The state tests in math, English language arts, and science that are normally given in these grades produced no publicly reportable proficiency rates. As a result, there is no state-tested academic baseline to describe here. A parent looking for concrete measures of student performance beyond the school’s own internal assessments may have limited publicly available information to draw on.
The school serves both middle and high school grades. No graduation rate was reported in the available data, which often reflects the small size of the senior class in a given year. No data on chronic absenteeism, course access, or staffing ratios was available either, so it is not possible to say how the school compares to others in Las Animas County on those fronts. The school is a regular public school, not a charter or magnet, and its Title I status was not reported.
Kim’s population has experienced long-term decline, with the 2020 census recording just over sixty residents. A more recent estimate suggests a slight uptick, but no major new housing or development projects were identified. The district, for its part, shows no recent structural changes in the form of new programs, grade reconfigurations, or boundary adjustments that would be directly relevant to a parent deciding on this school.
The housing market in Kim reflects its rural, low-density character. Specific values and rents were not part of the data provided, but the town’s very small size and agricultural base mean housing options are limited and the market is not comparable to more populous areas.
For a family considering this school, the core reality is that Kim Undivided High School is a small, rural school in a tiny, slowly depopulating town, where state testing data is unavailable due to the small cohort sizes. The school serves as the educational and civic center of its community. A parent seeking a school where their child would be in a very small class with a high degree of familiarity among students and staff may find that suitable. A parent looking for comparative academic benchmarks, a wide array of course offerings, or a setting with more demographic diversity and economic growth will find this context quite different from that of a larger district. Given the absence of reported testing data and other standard metrics, a family would likely need to visit, speak with the principal, and ask directly about academic expectations and outcomes.
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