The top reported proficiency rate is 56% in Math. The lowest is 28% in Science.
Original Research by School Decision on Rothsay Elementary
Rothsay Elementary serves the youngest students in the Rothsay Public School District, a pre-kindergarten through sixth grade building that shares a single campus with the district’s upper grades just off Interstate 94 in Rothsay, Minnesota. The school is the sole elementary option for this small, prairie town of roughly that scale, which straddles Otter Tail and Wilkin counties in western Minnesota. The town’s own description points to a quiet, safe, small-town character with affordable housing, though its commercial footprint is limited to a farmers co-op elevator, a gas station, and a few highway-front retail spots. Many residents commute a span to the Fargo-Moorhead area for work and shopping, a pattern that shapes the community’s daily life.
Enrollment sits at under two hundred students, spanning from a pre-kindergarten cohort through sixth grade. The student body is overwhelmingly white, a demographic profile typical of this part of rural Minnesota. A substantial share of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, a marker that families here may want to keep in mind when considering school resources and supports. The school is a regular public school, not a charter or magnet, and Title I status was not reported.
The academic picture comes from the most recent state testing data available. In math, results varied by grade level. A majority of third and fourth graders met the state’s proficiency bar, with a noticeably smaller share reaching that level in fifth grade and a larger drop in sixth grade, where fewer than half were proficient. The combined math proficiency across all tested grades sits at just below three-fifths, a figure that places this school toward the stronger end when compared with other districts in Wilkin County. In reading, a smaller share of third graders scored proficient compared with the higher grades; fourth and fifth graders showed the strongest results, with a majority reaching the bar, while sixth graders fell in between. Overall reading proficiency across the school was below two-fifths. Fifth graders also took the state science assessment, and a modest share of those students scored proficient. Because this is the only year of testing data available for the school, no trend is visible. The district’s high school, on the same campus, would handle the graduation rate measure, which means that metric does not apply here.
Special populations data, such as students receiving special education services or English learner supports, was not provided. A parent who wants to understand how the school serves those groups may want to ask directly. Attendance and chronic absenteeism figures were also absent from the record.
The school sits on a separate campus a short distance from Rothsay’s small downtown core, in a single building that also houses the district’s middle and high school grades. The city’s website notes that the facility includes modern classrooms, a science lab, a library, and a gymnasium. The town itself has a few civic anchors: a historic blacksmith shop on the National Register, a prairie chicken monument on the outskirts, and parks that the city highlights as a community asset. Population has been essentially flat for decades, with a slight decline in recent estimates, and no major new housing or commercial development has been publicly reported.
This is a school that fits a family looking for a very small, rural elementary setting in a stable but aging town where deep community ties are the norm. The academic results show a varied performance pattern across grade levels and subjects, with stronger math outcomes in the early elementary grades and a dip in the upper elementary years. Families moving into the area from a larger district may find the scale and the limited local commercial amenities a significant adjustment. The easy highway access to a metro area provides a practical counterweight, but the day-to-day life of the school is thoroughly small-town.
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