Best Middle Schools in Zip Code 99901

Zip code 99901, located in Ketchikan, Alaska, is home to just one middle school—Schoenbar Middle School—serving grades 7 and 8 with an enrollment of 252 students. Because this is the only middle school in the ZIP code, all comparisons must be made at the district or state level rather than against nearby schools. Schoenbar is part of the Ketchikan Gateway Borough School District and maintains a fairly small learning environment with a 12.6-to-1 student-teacher ratio. Around 35 percent of its students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, reflecting a moderate level of economic disadvantage.

Schoenbar Middle School shows a mix of strengths and weaknesses in its academic performance. Science is clearly its strongest subject, with 41.24 percent of students proficient in 2025-2026, outperforming both the district (35.05 percent) and the state (37.81 percent). English language arts is stable and essentially at the state average, with 33.33 percent proficiency and a slight year-over-year improvement. Mathematics, however, is the biggest area of concern: after a strong 38.53 percent proficiency rate in 2024-2025, math scores dropped sharply by 8.63 points to just 29.90 percent in 2025-2026, falling below the state average of 32.20 percent. The school earned a one-star rating and ranked 67th out of 90 Alaska middle schools in 2025-2026, down from a two-star, 36th-percentile performance the previous year.

Schoenbar spends roughly $21,673 per student, which is high in absolute terms, yet its academic outcomes place it in the lower third of Alaska middle schools; it is worth noting that this spending figure is from 2018-2019, several years older than the achievement data. For parents, the picture is encouraging in science and ELA, but the steep math decline clearly deserves attention. The school's state ranking has also been inconsistent, swinging from the 15th percentile in 2023-2024 to the 36th percentile in 2024-2025, then back down to the 26th percentile in 2025-2026. Improving mathematics achievement and sustaining the momentum in science would likely lift Schoenbar Middle School's rating in future assessment cycles.