The top reported proficiency rate is 65% in English language arts. The lowest is 40% in Science.
Original Research by School Decision on Highmore Jr. High - 03
Highmore Jr. High - 03 sits in the small rural town of Highmore, the county seat of Hyde County, at the crossroads of US Highway 14 and South Dakota Highway 47. The town is a ranching and farming community with a compact commercial core along two parallel streets, Iowa Avenue and Commercial Avenue, where the post office, library, clinic, banks, and the Venture Communications Cooperative headquarters are concentrated. Civic life centers on the Hyde County Courthouse, and community gatherings revolve around events like Old Settlers Day and the Snow Queen Festival. The town's population is declining and aging, with no major new housing developments identified. The surrounding area has been noted as one of the largest wind energy development areas in South Dakota, which may shape the local economy in coming years, though no specific projects or timelines are detailed.
The school serves only seventh and eighth grades, which explains the absence of a graduation rate. State testing data from the 2024-25 school year is available for this school. In English language arts, roughly two-thirds of tested students reached proficiency. Math was close behind, with about three in five students proficient. Science was lower, with around two in five students meeting the proficiency bar. Full participation was achieved across all three subjects. No multi-year trend data was available, so it is not possible to say whether these results are improving, holding steady, or declining over time. The science result is the soft spot in the profile, and a parent may want to look into this further with the school to understand how science instruction is structured across the two grade levels and what supports are in place.
The school is very small, with a total enrollment that fits in a single classroom per grade. This size means students likely know every classmate well and staff can offer close attention, but it also limits the breadth of peer groups and elective offerings that a larger junior high might provide. The student body is predominantly white, with a modest representation of American Indian or Alaska Native students and a small number of Hispanic, Asian, and multiracial students. The share of students qualifying for free or reduced-price lunch is low relative to what many rural schools report, suggesting a relatively stable economic base among enrolled families. Data on students with individualized education programs and English learners was not reported, so the picture of special populations here is incomplete.
Several pieces of information that would help round out a parent's understanding were not available. Title I status was not reported. The school's locale classification, staffing levels, attendance patterns, discipline data, and course access details were all absent. No program offerings, such as advanced coursework, dual credit, or extracurricular activities, were listed. Housing values and rental costs for the area were not provided, so it is difficult to characterize the cost of living or housing market a family would enter. No comparison fact-set was available to position this school against others in the county or region. The district brief turned up no recent referendums, bond issues, curriculum changes, or other parent-relevant developments, so there is little to report on the district's current direction or priorities beyond what the school-level data shows.
What the available picture does convey is a very small junior high in an agricultural community, with solid reading and math results and a weaker showing in science, serving a tight-knit group of students in a town where the population is shrinking and aging. For a family evaluating this school, the close-knit environment and the decent proficiency numbers in core subjects are the strengths to weigh against the limited program information and the thin data on special populations. The gaps in the record are genuine gaps, not signals of poor performance, and they reflect what was and was not reported rather than what the school does or does not offer.
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