Original Research by School Decision on Squaw Gap School
Squaw Gap School is a regular public school serving kindergarten through eighth grade, located on Highway 16 north of Sidney, North Dakota. It is the sole school in the EARL 18 school district, a very small rural district. The district brief notes that the district has fewer than five students, which aligns with the enrollment data showing no students currently reported across any grade. This is an extremely small operation, the kind of one-school rural district that exists in the sparsely settled parts of western North Dakota.
Because the school has essentially no enrolled students in the current data, most of the metrics a parent would normally consult are absent. There are no state assessment results, no multi-year academic trend data, no free-or-reduced-price lunch figures, no special-population counts for individualized education programs or English learners, and no civil-rights or discipline data. These gaps reflect the school's current enrollment situation rather than any reporting failure. A school with no students does not generate test scores or demographic breakdowns.
The school does not serve high school grades, so there is no graduation rate to report. That is expected for a K-8 configuration and does not indicate a missing or weak outcome.
No program offerings data was provided, so there is no way to characterize the curriculum, extracurriculars, or any specialized pathways from the available information. A parent considering this school would need to contact the district directly to understand what instruction actually looks like in practice, especially given that the enrollment figure raises questions about whether the school is actively operating classes or is in a dormant state.
The housing context drawn from the school's zip code area shows a market that sits below both the North Dakota statewide benchmark and the national benchmark for typical home values, with moderate year-over-year appreciation. Rental costs are modest, and the area's rent-to-income ratio suggests renting is affordable relative to typical earnings. The price-to-income ratio is below the national figure, meaning homeownership here is more attainable than in many parts of the country. Mortgage rates, tracking the national 30-year fixed series, have been hovering in the mid-sixes. These figures paint a picture of an affordable rural housing market, though how that connects to school enrollment is unclear given the lack of students.
The locale brief for the Sidney area describes a sparsely populated rural township with no net population change between the 2020 census and the present. No major housing or commercial development projects were identified, and no specific employers, civic anchors, parks, or transit infrastructure surfaced in the research. This is open, quiet rural country with minimal infrastructure, which is consistent with the kind of place where a one-room or near-empty school would exist.
The district brief turned up no parent-relevant changes: no referendums, no property-tax shifts, no curriculum changes, and no other developments with lasting impact in recent years. This is a district that appears to be stable in the narrow sense that nothing is changing, but the absence of students is the defining fact.
For a parent or resident reading this, the honest takeaway is that Squaw Gap School is a tiny rural K-8 institution in an affordable, very low-density part of North Dakota, and the available data does not support a meaningful academic or programmatic assessment because the school currently shows no enrolled students. Anyone with a practical interest in this school should contact the EARL 18 district office directly to confirm whether the school is actively serving students and what, if anything, is being offered.
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