Best Public Schools in Silt, CO

Cactus Valley Elementary School is the only school in Silt, Colorado, serving grades PK through 5 as part of the Garfield School District No. Re-2, with 462 students enrolled. Because there are no middle or high schools in the city, this elementary school represents the entire K-12 educational landscape in Silt, offering families a single but well-defined option. The district itself ranks 92 out of 115 Colorado districts, placing it in the 20th percentile with a 1-star rating, which provides important context for how the school performs relative to its surrounding system.

In terms of academic performance, Cactus Valley Elementary School shows notable strengths in math. The school's all-grades math proficiency rate is 31.7%, significantly outpacing the district's 23.9% and approaching the state average of 37.3%. The gap is especially striking in 4th grade, where the school's 38% proficiency nearly matches the state's 39% and dwarfs the district's 24.4%. English Language Arts tells a different story, with the school's all-grades proficiency of 29.3% sitting slightly below the district's 30.5% and well below the state's 44.7%. Encouragingly, ELA improves as students advance, rising from 20.6% in 3rd grade to 37.1% in 5th grade. Science, however, saw a dramatic year-over-year drop in 5th grade, falling from 38.2% to 25.7%, though it still exceeds the district's 17.6%.

The school's ranking slipped from the 40th percentile in 2024-2025 to the 31st percentile in 2025-2026, though its 2-star rating remained unchanged. One of the school's standout features is its exceptionally low chronic absenteeism rate of 10.1%, which is nearly half the district rate of 18.1% and less than half the state rate of 28.4%. With a free/reduced lunch rate of 41.13% and a student-teacher ratio of 16.5, Cactus Valley Elementary School serves a moderate-poverty population while maintaining strong attendance and competitive math performance. Families considering this school should weigh its solid math results, low absenteeism, and upward ELA trajectory against the concerning science decline and overall ELA gaps compared to state averages.