Original Research by School Decision on Roland-story High School
Roland-Story High School serves as the single high school for the Roland-Story Community School District, a district formed years ago through the merger of the Roland and Story City districts. The school sits in Story City, a small central Iowa town with a historic downtown and industrial parks along Interstate 35. It is a regular public high school serving grades nine through twelve, with an enrollment that is modest for a high school its size.
The student body is predominantly white, with a small Hispanic population and a still smaller share of students who identify as two or more races. Roughly one in five students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, a share that is relatively low compared to many Iowa public schools. Data on the share of students receiving special education services or identified as English learners was not available in the records reviewed.
Academically, Roland-Story High School posted strong results on the state’s assessments for the most recent school year reported. Proficiency rates in English language arts, mathematics, and science each landed in the mid-eighties, a level that signals solid grade-level performance across the core subjects. Because only a single year of testing data was available, there is no trend to examine, but the snapshot suggests that most students are meeting benchmarks. The school offers a regular academic program; specific details on advanced coursework, dual enrollment, or career and technical education pathways were not included in the available data, so a parent interested in those options would need to inquire directly with the school.
The high school’s athletic teams are known as the Norsemen, reflecting the area’s Scandinavian heritage, and compete in the Heart of Iowa Conference. Story City itself is a community that blends a walkable historic downtown—home to the oldest continuously operating theater in the Midwest and an antique carousel open seasonally—with auto-oriented commercial development along the interstate. Major employers include manufacturing and senior living organizations, and the town has seen modest population growth. Home values in the area are moderately above the state average but below the national median, a factor that may matter for families considering relocation.
Several pieces of information that parents often use to evaluate a high school were missing from the available records. No graduation rate was reported, nor were data on chronic absenteeism, discipline incidents, or staffing ratios. These gaps may reflect the reporting cycle or the data collection scope, but they are worth noting. The district brief turned up no recent major changes or initiatives, so the district appears stable without a new strategic plan or facility overhaul publicly noted.
In sum, Roland-Story High School is a small, community-integrated high school with strong state assessment results and a student body that is both economically and racially homogeneous. A family considering this school should feel confident about core academic proficiency but will want to ask directly about advanced course offerings, postsecondary readiness support, and the school’s track record on graduation and college-going, as those details were not present in the data reviewed.
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