Original Research by School Decision on Pace Alternative High School
Pace Alternative High School serves grades nine through twelve in Wapato, a small agricultural town within the external boundaries of the Yakama Indian Reservation. The school is part of the Wapato School District and is classified as an alternative school. For a family or resident looking at this school, the key starting point is understanding what an alternative setting means here and what the available data can and cannot tell you.
The school's enrollment is small, with a student body concentrated in the upper grades. The student composition is predominantly Hispanic, with a substantial American Indian or Alaska Native population as well. A very large share of students come from low-income households, as measured by free or reduced-price meal eligibility. Wapato itself is a working-class town with an economy rooted in agriculture, particularly orchards and potato farming, and a history of migrant labor. The town's population has seen a modest decline in recent years, and the community retains a compact, grid-like layout.
State testing data for Pace Alternative High School is suppressed and not available for reporting. This is common for small alternative schools, where the number of students tested in a given subject and grade is too low to report publicly without risking student identification. A parent should not interpret suppressed results as either a pass or a fail; the data simply is not published. Because the school serves a high school grade span, there is no graduation rate available in the data provided either. This is an important gap, and a parent may want to ask the school directly about its graduation and completion rates for alternative pathway students.
The comparison fact-set that would position this school relative to other districts in Yakima County could not be calculated because the key metrics — proficiency rates, graduation rate, and chronic absenteeism — were missing for this entity. That absence is consistent with the suppressed test data and the lack of a reported graduation rate.
There is no information available on course access, such as Advanced Placement, dual credit, or career and technical education offerings. The district brief turned up no recent parent-relevant changes, such as referendums, curriculum shifts, or boundary adjustments, in the public record. That does not mean nothing is happening, only that no major publicly reported developments were found from the period searched.
What a parent can see is the school's basic profile. It is an alternative high school, which typically means it serves students who have struggled in a traditional comprehensive high school setting, whether due to credit recovery needs, a nontraditional schedule, or other circumstances. The small enrollment and the fact that more than half the students are in twelfth grade suggest it may function as a credit-recovery or completion program for older students. The student body is overwhelmingly non-white, and the economic need level is high.
The housing context for Wapato, based on the broader area, shows home values that are low relative to the state of Washington as a whole. A family moving to Wapato would find a significantly more affordable housing market than many other parts of the state, but also a local economy with few large employers outside of the agricultural sector.
For a parent considering this school, the most important next step would be a direct conversation with the school about what its academic program looks like, what pathways to a diploma exist, and what supports are in place for students. The available data paints a picture of a small alternative school serving a high-poverty, majority-minority student body in an agricultural community, but it does not provide the test scores, graduation rates, or program details that would allow a full evaluation of academic outcomes. That is a significant limitation, and one that only the school itself can fill in.
See more original research from School Decision →