Original Research by School Decision on Notch Peak Elementary
Notch Peak Elementary is an unusual school, and the most important thing a parent needs to know up front is that it serves a very small number of students. Located on Palmer Canyon Road in Wheatland, Wyoming, it operates under Albany County School District #1 and covers kindergarten through eighth grade. With an enrollment small enough that only a single student appears in each tested grade, this is not a conventional neighborhood elementary school. It may reflect a rural, remote, or special-purpose setting, though the data does not specify which. What the data does make clear is that nearly every standard metric parents rely on is either missing or inapplicable here, and that gap is tied to the school's size rather than to any judgment about quality.
Wyoming's state assessment system, WY-TOPP, shows that one student was tested in fifth-grade math, one in fifth-grade ELA, and one in fourth-grade science. In every case the proficiency rate, average scale score, and participation rate are all suppressed or missing. This is what happens when a tested group is too small to report results without compromising student privacy. A parent looking for academic performance data will not find it here, and that is a function of the school's enrollment, not an indicator of weak outcomes. We looked for multi-year trend data and found none available for the same reason.
The school does not serve high school grades, so there is no graduation rate to report. Chronic absenteeism, discipline, course access, and staffing data were all absent from the available sources. Free-or-reduced-price lunch counts, special education rates, and English learner figures are also missing. Title I status, charter status, and magnet designation are all blank or not applicable. The racial composition of the two enrolled students is reported as white, but drawing any demographic picture from a group this small would not be meaningful. A parent may want to contact the school or Albany County School District #1 directly to understand what kind of educational setting this is, who it serves, and how instruction is structured for such a small group.
Wheatland itself, as publicly reported, is a small agricultural town and the county seat of Platte County, rooted in irrigation farming going back to the 1880s. The Wheatland Irrigation District, still operational, has been described as the largest privately owned irrigation system in the country. The town sits on flat semi-arid land along US 87, with I-25 bypassing to the west. Civic life centers on the county courthouse, the public library, and the Platte County Fairgrounds, which hosts the annual county fair and rodeo. Major employers include county government, the local school district, BNSF Railway's small offices, and the agricultural sector. Growth has been very slow, with the population remaining relatively stable in recent years. There is an oddity in the data worth noting: the school carries an Albany County address in the data while Wheatland is described as the seat of Platte County, and a parent may want to clarify which district and county jurisdiction actually apply.
The housing market in the school's zip code shows typical home values below both the Wyoming state benchmark and the national benchmark, with values slightly declining year over year. Mortgage costs relative to local incomes sit close to the national affordability ratio. Rent data was not available for this area.
Because the comparison set for Albany County districts could not compute a proficiency index, graduation rate, or absenteeism rate for this school, there is no neighbor comparison to render. Every metric came back inapplicable due to missing entity values, which again traces back to the tiny enrollment. In short, this is a school where the standard data framework simply does not apply, and a parent considering it should expect to gather information through direct conversation with the school rather than through published performance figures.
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