Original Research by School Decision on Reardan-edwall School District Options' Program
The Reardan-Edwall School District Options’ Program is an alternative school serving kindergarten through twelfth grade, and it is the sort of place a family chooses deliberately rather than by default. It sits inside the Reardan-Edwall School District, whose main campuses are in the town of Reardan itself, a small agricultural community in Lincoln County, Washington, about a short drive west of Spokane. Reardan’s roots are in wheat farming and grain shipping, and its schools are integrated into the town’s fabric; Mule Days, the town’s annual June celebration, includes a three-on-three basketball tournament held in front of the high school.
The program’s enrollment is small, and its student body is predominantly white, with a modest share of Hispanic students. A substantial share of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. The school serves all grades from kindergarten through high school, which is unusual for an alternative program and suggests a close-knit, multi-age environment where siblings can attend the same building all the way through.
Because this is an alternative school, the standard academic performance measures are largely absent from the available data. State assessment results in math, English language arts, and science for the most recent school year are suppressed for all tested grades. The suppression is tied to the small size of the tested population, which is common for a program of this enrollment. A parent looking at this school will not find a state testing track record to evaluate, and that is not unusual for an alternative setting. The school’s type is the primary fact: it is designed for students who may benefit from a different educational approach than a traditional comprehensive school offers. What that approach looks like in practice is not detailed in the data, so a family would need to ask the school directly about its curriculum, instructional model, and how it supports students working toward a diploma.
The district brief reveals no recent changes of the kind that would be large in scale and lasting in effect, such as a bond passage or a boundary overhaul. The town of Reardan has grown modestly in recent decades, partly because of its proximity to Spokane and Fairchild Air Force Base, and housing values in the area are well below the state benchmark. That means the cost of living is relatively low, and a family buying a home here pays less than they would in many Washington communities.
For a parent considering this program, the central question is fit. The Options’ Program is not a school you send a child to for the test scores or the breadth of course offerings. It is a school you seek out because the conventional classroom environment is not working for a student, or because you want a small, alternative setting that serves all grades in one place. The peer group will be small, and the academic metrics are not visible in the way they are at a larger comprehensive school. That is not a weakness per se; it is a characteristic of the model. A parent should visit, talk to the staff, and understand how the program defines success and how it prepares students for what comes after high school. The absence of a public testing record and any publicly reported staffing or discipline data means a family will have to gather information directly from the school to get a clear picture.
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