Original Research by School Decision on Pine Hills Youth Corr Facil El
Pine Hills Youth Correctional Facility Elementary is a school that serves a very specific population: it is the educational arm of the Pine Hills Correctional Facility in Miles City, Montana, operated by the state Department of Corrections. This is not a neighborhood school. It serves adjudicated youth in grades six through eight, and its enrollment is extremely small. The student body, at the time of reporting, consisted of a single student who identifies as American Indian or Alaska Native. The school is not a charter or magnet school, and no Title I status was reported.
The setting is Miles City, the largest town in southeastern Montana and the regional hub for commerce, healthcare, and agriculture. The town is compact and car-dependent, with a historic downtown along Main Street and a more auto-oriented commercial strip on South Haynes Avenue. The cattle industry and healthcare are the dominant economic drivers. Holy Rosary Healthcare, Billings Clinic, and Stockman Bank are major employers. The town has been on a stable or slow-growth trajectory for over a decade.
The district itself, the Department of Corrections-Youth, underwent a significant change in 2025. Pine Hills Correctional Facility was restored to a juvenile-only facility for the first time in decades. Adult male inmates were moved to other state facilities, and the state's adjudicated female youth offenders, ages ten through seventeen, were relocated from an out-of-state Idaho facility back to Pine Hills in Miles City. This reconfiguration means the school now serves both male and female juvenile offenders within Montana for the first time in the facility's history. The district brief notes this is a lasting shift in the educational mission.
Because this is a correctional facility school serving a very small, transient population, standard academic indicators are not available or are not meaningful in the same way they are for a traditional public school. State testing data was not reported. There is no graduation rate, as the school only serves middle school grades. Information on free or reduced-price lunch eligibility, special education services, and English learner status was not provided. Chronic absenteeism, discipline, and staffing data were also absent. This absence is consistent with the nature of the school: it operates within a secure residential facility where the educational context is fundamentally different from a mainstream school, and standard accountability measures may not apply or may be collected under different frameworks.
For a parent or resident reading this, it is important to understand that Pine Hills Youth Correctional Facility Elementary is not a school that families choose or enroll in through typical processes. It serves youth who are in state custody, and its academic programs are delivered within a correctional setting. The recent change to a juvenile-only facility and the addition of female youth in-state may affect the educational environment and programming, but no specific course offerings, extracurriculars, or academic pathways were reported in the available data. Anyone seeking more information about the education provided to youth at this facility would need to contact the Montana Department of Corrections or the school directly.
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