Original Research by School Decision on Rice Lake High
Rice Lake High is a regular public high school in the city of Rice Lake, serving grades nine through twelve as part of the Rice Lake Area School District. The school is a comprehensive high school in a community that functions as a regional commercial, industrial, educational, and medical hub for northwestern Wisconsin, drawing students from the city and surrounding rural areas.
The enrollment is on the larger side for a single high school in this part of the state, with a student body distributed fairly evenly across the four grade levels. The demographic composition is predominantly white, with a small but present Hispanic population and very small numbers of students from other racial and ethnic backgrounds. More than a third of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, a share that puts the school in a middle position relative to other schools in the area and suggests a meaningful proportion of families working with modest incomes.
State testing data for this school was not available in the data provided, so there is no direct measure of how student performance in English, math, or science compares to state averages or to other high schools in Barron County. This absence of test results makes it difficult to assess academic proficiency trends at Rice Lake High from the evidence at hand. Similarly, the school’s four-year graduation rate and chronic absenteeism rate were not present in the data, so those key measures of student persistence and engagement are also unknown from this source. In a school that serves only high school grades, these are standard metrics a parent would want to examine further with the district.
The data also did not include information on the availability of Advanced Placement courses, dual-credit or early college programs, career and technical education pathways, or other specialized academic offerings. Without that information, the breadth of the academic program remains an open question. The school’s staffing ratios, teacher qualifications, and class sizes were also not reported in the available data.
On the civil rights and disciplinary side, the record is similarly silent. There were no figures on the number of students receiving special education services, the number of English learners, or the rates of suspensions, expulsions, or other disciplinary actions. A parent interested in the school’s approach to student support and behavioral climate would need to seek that information directly from the district.
The economic context of the community is moderate. Housing values in the area are below the Wisconsin state benchmark, and rents are lower still, making the city relatively affordable compared to more urbanized parts of the state. The 30-year mortgage rate at the time of this data was around the national average, and the unemployment rate was typical for the period. The city’s population has been stable to slightly declining, and the broader county shows no signs of rapid growth or major new development, which suggests a stable but not expanding enrollment picture for the district.
Rice Lake itself offers a traditional small-city environment with a compact downtown, lakefront parks, and a mix of residential neighborhoods and highway-commercial corridors. The high school building is located on South Wisconsin Avenue, near the downtown core and within walking distance of the lake. The district’s elementary and middle schools are spread across the city rather than clustered on a single campus, so students transition between different physical plants as they move through the grades. The presence of a UW-Eau Claire branch campus and a technical college in the same city means that some postsecondary bridge programs may be available locally, but the data did not confirm whether the high school has formal partnerships with those institutions.
For a family considering this school, the main open questions revolve around academic performance and program depth. The school is a standard, regularly operating public high school in a mid-sized regional center with a stable community and affordable housing. The absence of testing and graduation data means that a family should contact the school or district directly to obtain the most recent state report card, course catalog, and outcomes data before forming a conclusion about the academic pathway available here.
See more original research from School Decision →