Original Research by School Decision on Burns Flat-dill City Hs
Burns Flat-Dill City High School serves grades nine through twelve in Washita County, in the small rural town of Burns Flat. The school is the sole high school within the Burns Flat-Dill City district, and its enrollment of roughly the size of one large-grade cohort across all four years means it is a genuinely small high school, one where a student would likely be known by most of the staff by name.
The student body is predominantly white, with a notable Latino share and a small number of Black and Native American students, giving it a largely homogeneous but not entirely isolated peer environment. The school reports its total enrollment figures, but does not report the share of students who qualify for free or reduced-price meals, nor the share of students with an Individualized Education Plan or English learner classification. Those are meaningful gaps; a parent or resident would be wise to ask the school directly about the economic and special-education profile of the high school population, as that data is simply not made available through the public reporting channels reviewed.
State testing results were not available for this school in the data examined. The comparison framework that would have placed this school’s proficiency index, four-year graduation rate, and chronic absenteeism rate relative to other districts in Washita County was also not applicable because those school-level metrics were missing. This means there is no state assessment snapshot to use as a benchmark. It is possible that this absence reflects the school’s circumstances—test participation conditions or data suppression in a small school—but without more information, a family choosing between high schools should not assume the absence signals either strength or weakness. The same caution applies to disciplinary data and course access information, which were also absent.
The town of Burns Flat itself has a distinctive history. It grew around the school and then rapidly during World War II with the establishment of a naval air station. That base later became the Clinton-Sherman Industrial Airpark, a licensed spaceport with one of the longest civilian runways in North America, and it remains the dominant economic feature of the area. The town’s population has fluctuated dramatically over the decades, tied to military and industrial activity, and the most recent census shows a population of about the size of a moderate town, with a modest vacancy rate in its housing stock. The community has typically been family-oriented, with a concentration of households that include children.
No parent-relevant district changes—such as boundary adjustments, bond measures, or new leadership—were found in publicly available records for Burns Flat-Dill City. That makes it hard to evaluate whether the district is in a period of stability or transition, and a family may want to inquire with the district office directly about any recent or upcoming developments that could affect the high school.
What can be said about Burns Flat-Dill City High School is that it is a small, rural high school in a town with an unusual industrial identity and a long history of change. The data gaps are real and should give any prospective family pause. Without assessment results, graduation rate information, or civil rights indicators, the school’s academic profile is largely opaque from the outside. A parent weighing this school will likely need to contact the school directly, ask about curriculum offerings, dual-credit or career-technical partnerships with the nearby Western Technology Center, and the school’s track record for postsecondary placement. In a setting this small, the principal and counseling staff are probably the best sources for the information that the public data does not provide.
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