Original Research by School Decision on Early Childhood Special Education (
This is a special education school that serves only pre-kindergarten students, all of whom are between three and five years old. Because it serves only the earliest grades, it has no state testing results, no graduation rate, and no chronic absenteeism data. Those gaps are not a reflection of performance; they simply reflect the age of the children and the purpose of the program. A parent looking for test scores or academic outcomes for this school will not find them, because the school’s entire function is early childhood special education, not grade-level academic instruction.
The school is part of the St. Anthony-New Brighton Schools district, which covers the small, first-ring suburb of Saint Anthony Village northeast of Minneapolis. The school itself is located on Silver Lake Road, the city’s primary commercial corridor. The enrollment is very small, which is typical for a specialized early childhood program. The student body is predominantly white, with smaller numbers of Black, Asian, and multiracial children, and no Hispanic or Native American students enrolled in the data provided.
Roughly a third of the students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, a measure that is reported but is less straightforward in a pre-kindergarten special education setting than it would be in a grades K-12 school. The school’s own data did not report the share of children with Individualized Education Programs, which is a notable gap given that this is a special education school. A parent would want to confirm directly with the program what specific disabilities or delays the program serves and how eligibility is determined.
Saint Anthony Village itself is a compact, walkable inner-ring suburb that has seen significant redevelopment over the past two decades, most notably the replacement of the old Apache Plaza mall with the Silver Lake Village shopping and residential development. Housing values in the zip code are in the middle range for the Minneapolis area, and rent is also moderate relative to the national picture. The district did not have any recent major policy or referendum changes reported in the available data, so a parent would need to contact the district for information about curriculum, transportation, or early childhood program changes.
For a family with a young child who has been identified as needing special education services before kindergarten, this school provides a dedicated early childhood special education setting within a small district in a stable suburban community. The school’s small size means that services are likely individualized, but parents should be aware that the program’s eligibility criteria, staff-to-student ratio, and specific therapy offerings are not captured in the available data. Because this is a pre-kindergarten-only program, it is a temporary placement; the child would move to the district’s elementary school for kindergarten, regardless of continued special education needs.
See more original research from School Decision →