Original Research by School Decision on Latham Elem.
Latham Elementary is a single, regular public school serving kindergarten through eighth grade as the only school in the Moniteau County R-V district. With a total enrollment that is very small for a K-8 building, the school sits in the unincorporated rural crossroads hamlet of Latham, Missouri, a community of around 70 to 80 residents that first appeared as a census-designated place in the 2020 census. The built environment is sparse: a post office, a bank, a fire station, at least two churches, two antique shops, and the elementary school itself are clustered along State Highway E. There is no separated campus or downtown district; civic and community functions are simply interspersed among the handful of buildings at this rural ridge-top settlement. No major employers operate in Latham itself; residents likely commute to the county seat of California, about a short drive northeast, or to other nearby towns for work. The housing stock is small—a mix of owner-occupied and renter-occupied homes with a number of vacant units—and the population has shown minimal, marginal growth since the 2020 census.
The student body reflects the surrounding area in composition. The majority of students are white, with a notable share identifying as Hispanic. A substantial portion of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, a marker of the economic context of the community. Data on students with disabilities and English learners were not available, and no information on discipline, staffing, or course access was reported in the sources we reviewed.
State testing results for Latham Elementary are suppressed for every tested subject and grade—math, English language arts, and science—in the most recent year for which data was reported. The suppression is due to very small tested counts, typically fewer than a handful of students per grade level. The school is too small for the state to release proficiency rates or participation rates without risking individual student identification. As a result, the public cannot gauge academic performance through published state assessment numbers. The school does not serve high school grades, so there is no graduation rate, and a four-year graduation rate comparison across the district is not applicable. The district’s overall proficiency index and chronic absenteeism metrics are also missing for the same reason of suppressed data.
Because the school is the only one in the district, any parent-relevant changes to the Moniteau County R-V district that would meet a four-year, lasting-impact bar were not found in publicly available sources. The district and school are too small and stable for such changes to be documented in the searches conducted.
Given the very thin public data, a family considering Latham Elementary would find little to compare on typical academic metrics. What is clear is the setting: a deeply rural, small-scale K-8 environment where the school functions as a community anchor alongside the post office and churches. The peer group is small, and the grade span means students would need to transition to a different school for high school. The absence of published test results and program offerings means that any assessment of academic quality or student support would need to come from direct inquiry with the school or the district office. For a family that values a very small, locally grounded rural school and is comfortable with limited public performance information, Latham Elementary fits that profile. For a family that relies on comparative data to judge academic strength or breadth of offerings, the available information simply does not provide enough to draw conclusions.
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