Original Research by School Decision on Springlake-earth Daep
Springlake-Earth DAEP is a tenth-grade alternative school operated by Springlake-Earth Independent School District in Earth, a small agricultural town in northwestern Lamb County, Texas. The school serves students on a four-day instructional week (Tuesday through Friday), a structural calendar change the district adopted around 2022 as part of a teacher-recruitment strategy and has maintained as a permanent feature.
At present, enrollment at DAEP is extremely small, consisting of a single student in the tenth grade. That student is Hispanic. No state testing data, graduation data, attendance metrics, or discipline records are available for this school, which is typical for a specialized alternative setting serving a very limited population and not part of the district's regular accountability reporting. The school's physical address is listed at FM 302 in Earth.
Springlake-Earth ISD itself is a consolidated rural district serving Earth and surrounding communities, with about a hundred students district-wide and roughly 25 classroom teachers. The district's main campuses are clustered on the edge of town rather than embedded in a traditional downtown. Earth itself is a declining agricultural community of a few thousand residents, built on cotton and grain farming across Lamb County. The town has lost population over decades as younger residents have moved out; it reads as quiet and family-oriented, with most residents owning their homes but limited job diversity beyond farming and the school district itself. The only stoplight in town marks the intersection of U.S. Highway 70 and Farm Road 302.
Housing in the area is affordable relative to state and national benchmarks. The median home value is well below the state average, and a family with a median income could expect a typical monthly mortgage payment that sits in the lower range for Texas.
An alternative school of this size, serving one student, reflects a specialized purpose within the district. A parent considering this placement should seek direct conversation with the district about the school's specific mission, support structure, how individualized instruction is delivered in that setting, and what post-secondary pathways or outcomes the program aims to support. The absence of comparative testing and outcome data does not indicate weakness; it reflects the nature of alternative schools, which typically serve students whose needs differ substantially from the traditional academic track and fall outside state standardized testing regimes.
See more original research from School Decision →