Original Research by School Decision on Bourbon High School
Bourbon High School sits just off the old Route 66 corridor in a small, car-dependent town that is seeing a slow population decline. The town’s economy leans on manufacturing, retail, and health care, and the school is a regular public high school serving grades nine through twelve as part of the Crawford County R-I district. The district itself has no publicly reported recent changes—no bond issues, curriculum shifts, or board decisions that would alter a family’s sense of what to expect.
The school’s enrollment is moderate for a rural high school in this part of Missouri. The student body is predominantly White, with a handful of students from other racial backgrounds. A substantial share of students qualify for free or reduced-price meals, a marker that the school serves a community with significant economic need. Housing in the area is notably more affordable than national averages, and the typical home value has been rising at a pace faster than the national trend, though it remains well below the national benchmark. Monthly mortgage costs here are lower than what a renter would typically pay, which tilts the math toward buying for families able to do so.
The most immediate thing a parent will notice is the absence of academic outcome data. No state testing results appear in the records, and no graduation rate is reported. For a regular high school serving tested grades, this is a gap that a family would want to follow up on directly with the school or the district. The data does not indicate why these metrics are missing—it may be a matter of reporting timing, state suppression rules for small populations, or some other reason—but the result is the same: there is no externally measured picture of how students perform on state assessments or how many finish in four years. The school’s website is not referenced in the data, so a parent would need to seek out that information.
The comparison set that is available places Bourbon High School relative to other districts in Crawford County, but because the key metrics are missing, no actual comparisons can be drawn. There are only two districts in the county, so the field is very narrow.
The school’s setting shapes the daily reality. Bourbon is a rural town along Interstate 44, oriented around the old highway corridor that runs through it. The high school campus, like the district offices and the elementary and middle schools, is on or near that corridor rather than set apart. The town has a public library branch, some Route 66 heritage tourism, and an active economic development group that runs events like an annual car show and barbecue festival. But there is no public transit, and the built environment is low-density and car-dependent. The average household has multiple vehicles, and commute times are modest.
For a family considering Bourbon High School, the central question is what academic program and outcomes look like on the ground. Without test scores or a graduation rate, the school is essentially opaque on those fronts from the available data. The student body is small and demographically homogeneous, with a notable share of families facing economic hardship. The town itself is not growing, but it is stable in its small-town character, with affordable housing and a Route 66 identity. Any decision would likely require a direct conversation with the school about course offerings, dual-credit opportunities, college-going patterns, and how the school supports students who come from lower-income households. That information is not in the data, and a parent should not assume it one way or the other.
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