Petersburg High School

Petersburg High School is a small public high school in Petersburg, Alaska, serving roughly 144 students in grades 9–12 as the sole high school within the Petersburg Borough School District, a remote Southeast Alaska community with no other high schools within 20 miles. The school currently holds a 4-star rating, ranking 17th of 62 Alaska high schools — the 73rd percentile statewide. This follows a long stretch as an elite performer: the school ranked among the top 5 high schools in Alaska for three consecutive years (2020–21 through 2023–24), then experienced a single-year dip to the 58th percentile in 2024–25 before beginning to recover.

Petersburg High School's most distinctive strength is its exceptional results for low-income and migrant students, who consistently rank among the very best in Alaska — often 1st or 2nd in the state. This matters because a large share of the student body (roughly 60–70%) qualifies for free or reduced-price lunch, so this success applies to most students, not a small subgroup. The school also performs well above state averages in English/language arts (56% proficiency vs. 31% statewide in 9th grade) and science, and its graduation rate is an impressive 97.3%. Small classes — about 12 students per teacher — and high per-pupil spending support the school's ability to give students individualized attention.

The clearest opportunity for improvement is mathematics. While 9th-grade math proficiency (21.88%) is above the state average (17.91%), it trails the school's own reading scores by a wide margin, and math results have fluctuated considerably from year to year. The school also shows a gap in statewide subgroup rankings between female and male students, though that gap narrowed in the most recent year. Finally, because each grade level has only about 36 students, single cohorts can cause noticeable swings in metrics and rankings — a reminder that Petersburg's long-term record matters more than any single-year snapshot. Overall, this is a strong, well-resourced high school with an uncommon record of success serving high-need students.