The reported proficiency rate for English language arts is 18%.
Original Research by School Decision on Lodge Pole School
Lodge Pole School is a small public elementary school serving prekindergarten through sixth grade in Hays, Montana, a community on the southern edge of the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation. It belongs to the Hays-Lodge Pole K-12 Schls district and is the only school in the district serving those early grades; older students attend the district’s high school elsewhere. With an enrollment that is modest for its grade band, the school operates in a setting that is remote and rural, shaped by the reservation’s culture, geography, and economic realities.
State assessment data for the 2023-24 school year is partly obscured. The state suppressed the school’s mathematics proficiency result and its science result, a common practice when the number of tested students is very small or the data is otherwise sensitive. The English language arts result was reported: roughly one in six students met the state’s proficiency standard. For context, the school’s overall proficiency across all tested subjects sits above the midpoint relative to the districts in Blaine County that could produce a comparable figure. That comparison, however, draws from a very small cohort of districts, so a parent would want to look into this further with the school to understand how its performance compares to similar schools across the state.
The student body is almost entirely American Indian or Alaska Native, reflecting the community it serves. Every enrolled student qualifies for free or reduced-price lunch under federal income guidelines, a straightforward marker of the economic conditions families face. The school does not appear to report counts for students with disabilities or English learners, so a parent seeking that information would need to contact the school directly.
Hays itself is a very small, tight-knit place. It is primarily residential, with few commercial amenities and no traditional downtown. Community life revolves around the school, St. Paul’s Mission Church, and the annual Hays Pow Wow. The built environment is scattered homes and community buildings along rural roads; car ownership is nearly universal, and there is no public transit. The economy is centered on public administration, construction, and educational services, with the tribal government and the school district as likely primary employers. Property values and household incomes are well below national averages, and the homeownership rate is low. Growth has been modest and organic, driven by natural increase within the reservation community rather than outside investment.
The district itself has seen no major publicly reported changes in recent years that would alter a family’s sense of stability. What is available is a school that is deeply embedded in its community, serving a population that is predominantly Gros Ventre (Aaniiih) and Assiniboine, in a setting where cultural traditions and reservation life are the everyday context.
For a family considering Lodge Pole School, the picture is clear. This is a school for a family that wants a small, culturally rooted elementary education in a remote rural reservation setting. The academic outcomes, where they can be seen, show that many students are not reaching state proficiency benchmarks, and that is a real concern. A parent would want to talk directly with the school about how it supports students who are behind, what programs it offers, and what the path looks like for students moving on to the district’s high school. There is no graduation rate here because the school does not serve high school grades. The strengths lie in the community itself: the school is the center of a place where families know each other, where Native identity is central, and where the pace of life is far from urban pressures. For the right family, that context matters more than the numbers on a state report.
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