Original Research by School Decision on Bel Air Elementary School
Bel Air Elementary School sits in the northwest part of Minot, a mid-sized regional hub on the flat Drift Prairie of northern North Dakota. Minot grew up as a Great Northern Railway town and still calls itself the Magic City, but its modern identity is shaped heavily by Minot Air Force Base roughly fifteen miles north, home to bomb and missile wings and a large military population. The city serves as a trading center for a broad stretch of northern North Dakota, southwestern Manitoba, and southeastern Saskatchewan, with retail and service activity along Broadway and the US 2 and US 52 corridors. The Souris River winds through town from west to east, its oxbow lakes and floodplain a reminder of the devastating flood that damaged a large share of the city and prompted major Army Corps flood-control work. Minot's population has been stable to slightly declining, so the housing market here is steady rather than pressured. Typical home values in the school's zip code sit below both the state and national benchmarks, and renting is notably more affordable than carrying a mortgage at current rates. The city is auto-oriented by nature, with a walkable historic downtown core but most daily life spread along arterial roads.
Bel Air is a regular public elementary school in the Minot 1 district, serving pre-kindergarten through fifth grade. The enrollment is moderate for an elementary building, with fairly even distribution across the grade levels. The student body is predominantly white, with a Hispanic presence and small numbers of students from other racial and ethnic backgrounds. A modest share of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, lower than what many Plains elementary schools see, which generally reflects the working and middle-class residential neighborhoods feeding into the school. Data on English learners and students with individualized education programs was not available, so those populations could not be characterized here.
Academic results come from the most recent state assessment cycle, North Dakota's A-PLUS. This is a newly named assessment with revised proficiency cut scores, which means results cannot be cleanly compared to prior years and no trend is available. Participation was strong across all tested grades and subjects. The clearest pattern in the data is a decline in proficiency as students move up through the grades. Third-grade math showed the strongest results, with a solid share of students reaching proficiency. Fourth-grade math and science landed in a modest middle band. Fifth-grade results in both math and reading were the weakest, with a smaller portion of students meeting the proficiency bar. Fourth-grade reading sat in a moderate range, while third-grade reading was more mixed. Across all grades combined, math and science summary rates came in close to each other and above the reading summary rate. The fifth-grade slide is the kind of pattern a parent may want to look into further with the school, particularly whether it reflects a cohort effect, a transition challenge, or something about instruction in the upper elementary grades.
No data was available on program offerings, staffing ratios, attendance, discipline, or civil-rights indicators, so those dimensions could not be assessed. A graduation rate does not apply here because the school serves only elementary grades. State testing covers grades three through five, which is why pre-kindergarten, kindergarten, and first and second grades carry no assessment results.
At the district level, Minot 1 has publicly discussed redistricting and boundary changes tied to school capacity and enrollment balance, including possible closure or repurposing of buildings as part of long-term facilities planning. North Dakota has also expanded open enrollment, giving families more flexibility to choose schools within and across district lines. For a family considering Bel Air, these district-level conversations are worth tracking, since boundary adjustments could affect which neighborhoods feed into the school. The school presents a typical Minot elementary experience: a moderately sized neighborhood school in an affordable, stable community with decent early-grade academic results and a visible softening in the upper grades that invites questions.
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