The top reported proficiency rate is 52% in Science. The lowest is 37% in Math.
Original Research by School Decision on W F Morrison School
W F Morrison School sits in Troy, a small, rural town tucked into the Kootenai River gorge in Lincoln County, Montana. The school serves pre-kindergarten through sixth grade, and it is the elementary campus for the Troy Elem district. Older students attend Troy Junior-Senior High School, also within town limits. The school sits at 501 East Kalispell in the middle of this compact mountain community, where the built environment is a short downtown strip along U.S. Route 2 and residential streets that spread toward the river and surrounding forests.
The enrollment is small, and the student body is predominantly white, with a small share of Hispanic students and a similar share of students who identify as two or more races. Every single student at this school qualifies for free or reduced-price meals, a figure that signals a community with widespread economic need. The town itself has experienced population decline and economic constraint. The nearby Troy Mine, a historical source of silver and copper, was scheduled for closure. The area has also contended with a long-running EPA Superfund cleanup related to asbestos contamination from nearby vermiculite mines, with that cleanup largely completed and site control handed to the state in 2020. Troy has not seen significant new housing development in recent years. This is a community focused on stabilization and small-scale outdoor tourism, not expansion.
On state assessments, W F Morrison School posts mixed results. In math, about two out of every five students met the proficiency benchmark on the Smarter Balanced Assessment. In English language arts, the share was slightly higher, though still under half. Science results were stronger, with just over half of tested students reaching proficiency on the Montana Science Assessment. Compared with other districts in Lincoln County, the school’s overall proficiency across tested subjects and grades places it in the top quartile. That relative standing is worth noting, but the absolute numbers still point to a majority of students who are not yet meeting grade-level benchmarks in math and reading. A parent may want to look into this further with the school and ask about the specific supports in place.
Because the school serves only grades PK through six, it has no graduation rate to report. There is no data on chronic absenteeism, discipline, or staffing ratios, so a full picture of the school environment and student access to resources is not available from the public data. The district itself did not have recent changes that met the four-year lasting-impact bar, so the narrative here is limited to what can be drawn from the school’s own profile and the town’s context.
Housing values in Troy’s ZIP code are roughly in line with the national median, though a bit below the Montana statewide average. The affordability picture, with a price-to-income ratio that is elevated, suggests that homeownership may be a stretch for many households, which aligns with the high rate of meal assistance seen at the school. The unemployment rate has been steady but moderately above the national average.
For a family considering this school, the key questions center on academic support. The school is small, rural, and serves a high-need population with modest proficiency rates. The relative strength in science and the top-quartile standing within Lincoln County are bright spots, but the thinness of publicly available data on student support programs, special education, and English learner services means that a visit and a conversation with the principal would be essential. The town itself offers a quiet, outdoor-oriented lifestyle with limited commercial amenities, and the school is woven into that small-town fabric rather than set apart on a distant campus.
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