Original Research by School Decision on Tomah High
Tomah High serves roughly nine hundred students in grades nine through twelve and is the sole comprehensive high school of the Tomah Area School District, a geographically large district in Monroe County. The school is a regular public school, not a charter or magnet.
The student body is predominantly white, with a small number of students who identify as Hispanic, two or more races, American Indian or Alaska Native, Black, Asian, or Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander. A substantial share of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. Data on students with disabilities and English learners was not available.
State testing data was not available for Tomah High in this profile, so a direct academic performance comparison cannot be made here. A parent looking into the school’s academic track record would want to seek this information from the district or state report card. Similarly, no graduation rate or chronic absenteeism rate were present in the data examined, which leaves a gap in understanding how students persist and complete high school. These are two significant indicators a parent may want to investigate further with the school.
The neighborhood comparison, which places Tomah High relative to districts in Monroe County, could not calculate proficiency, graduation, or attendance metrics because the data for the school was missing. This means the school’s position among its county peers is not defined in this profile.
Tomah itself is a small city that functions as a regional transportation and service hub where Interstates 90 and 94 divide. It mixes residential neighborhoods with industrial parks, distribution facilities, healthcare campuses, and a downtown commercial corridor. Because of its highway junction location, the city has a broader range of restaurants and lodging than typical towns its size. Major employers include the Tomah VA Medical Center, Tomah Health hospital, Gundersen Health, and several manufacturers and distribution centers such as Walmart Distribution Center, Toro, and Mars Pet Care. The nearby military installations of Fort McCoy and Volk Field also shape the regional economy. The city has eleven parks, a citywide recreation trail, an aquatic center, and an Amtrak station serving the Empire Builder and Borealis trains. Housing values and rents sit below national medians and below the state benchmark, which may make the area more affordable for families.
The school district recently passed a 2024-25 budget that reduced the property tax rate, a financial change that could lower the cost of living for district residents. No other major district changes, such as referenda, curriculum shifts, or facility projects, were found in the available research.
This is a mid-sized public high school in a small, economically diversified regional hub, but key academic outcome measures are absent from the data examined. Without state test results or a graduation rate, a family cannot benchmark the school’s instructional effectiveness or student completion rate from this profile alone. The school serves as the central high school for a district that also includes several elementary schools, a middle school, an alternative school, and a Montessori charter school, giving families some variety at younger grades but a single high school pathway for the vast majority of students.
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