Original Research by School Decision on Shawnee Elementary
Shawnee Elementary is a public kindergarten-through-eighth-grade school in the Converse County School District #1 system, sitting along U.S. Highway 18/20 outside the main cluster of Douglas campuses. It is not a charter or magnet school. What sets it apart immediately is its size: the total enrollment is tiny, with just a handful of students spread across nine grade levels. Some grades have no students enrolled at all in the current year. This is the kind of school where a single child can represent an entire grade, and where multi-age interaction is simply the daily reality rather than a programmed choice.
The student body is nearly entirely white, with a small Hispanic presence. Free-or-reduced-price lunch data was not reported, so we cannot characterize the economic profile of the families here from the available data. Special population figures for individualized education programs and English learners were also missing, so those descriptions are left out rather than guessed.
On state testing, Shawnee participates in Wyoming's WY-TOPP assessment in math, English language arts, and science across the tested grades. Every proficiency rate the state reported for the most recent year came back as suppressed, which is what happens when the number of tested students in a grade is so small that publishing a result would risk identifying an individual child. The tested counts confirm that only a single student sat for each tested grade level. This means there is no usable proficiency picture from state data. A parent looking for academic outcomes should understand that the absence of reported rates reflects the school's extremely small size and student privacy protections, not a failure to test or a hidden weak result. The data simply cannot speak to proficiency at this scale.
Because Shawnee does not serve high school grades, there is no graduation rate to report. Chronic absenteeism, discipline, course access, and staffing data were not available in the payload. The school's Title I status was not reported, and no locale classification was assigned in the data provided. We looked for the district's strategic priorities and recent parent-relevant changes but found little in the available sources, so that is left out rather than speculated on.
Douglas itself is the Converse County seat and a regional commercial hub for surrounding ranches and rural areas. It began as a railroad supply point and retains that civic-commercial character, with government offices, retail, and hospitality along its Center Street core and highway corridors. The town is car-oriented, as is typical of small Wyoming cities, with Interstate 25 running through the center. Street life outside of events like the Wyoming State Fair in August is limited. The fairgrounds, the Wyoming Pioneer Memorial Museum, the Douglas Railroad Interpretive Center in the historic depot, and the Converse County Library serve as civic anchors. Nearby public lands include Medicine Bow National Forest and Thunder Basin National Grassland. The nearest commercial air service is a drive west to Casper.
The main Converse County School District #1 campuses in Douglas are organized as separate buildings by grade bands, from primary through high school, plus a branch campus of Eastern Wyoming College. Shawnee sits apart from that downtown campus structure, serving a rural population along the highway corridor. Douglas is growing slowly, with modest population increase and land area expansion in recent years suggesting ongoing residential development at the city's edges.
The housing market in the zip code area sits below both the state and national benchmarks for typical home values, and the price-to-income ratio is moderate. Mortgage rates hover in the mid-six range nationally. Rental data was not available for this area.
Against the comparison set of districts in Converse County, Shawnee's proficiency index, graduation rate, and chronic absenteeism metrics were all marked not applicable because the underlying values were missing from suppression. With only two districts in the county set, the comparison is narrow by definition.
For a parent considering Shawnee, the central question is whether a school this small fits the child and the family. The peer group will be tiny. Academic reporting from the state cannot tell you how students are performing because the numbers are too small to publish. A parent may want to talk directly with the school about how instruction is organized across grade levels, what materials and approaches are used, and how the district supports a campus of this size.
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