Florence Junior/Senior High School

Florence Junior/Senior High School serves 572 students in grades 7–12 in Florence, Colorado, a small community in Fremont County. The school has been recovering from a very difficult stretch: after ranking in the bottom 7 percent of Colorado high schools during the 2020–2021 and 2021–2022 school years, it now sits in the 29th percentile for 2025–2026. That places it below nearby Canon City High School (41st percentile) and Pueblo West High School (48th percentile), and the school's district, Fremont Re-2, is rated in the 7th percentile of Colorado districts — far behind the districts serving either comparison school.

The school's most serious academic weakness is math. Only 8 percent of 11th graders were proficient on the SAT math exam in 2025–2026, compared with 32 percent statewide, and math proficiency on the PSAT9, PSAT10, and CMAS tests is also roughly half the state average. Reading and writing results are more mixed: 9th graders actually outperform the state and both neighboring schools on the PSAT9 Reading/Writing test, with 75 percent proficient versus 66 percent statewide. But that bright spot fades by 10th and 11th grade, where proficiency drops to 54 percent, below the state average. The graduation rate of 82.6 percent trails the state's 85.6 percent and lags well behind Pueblo West's 96.7 percent, and chronic absenteeism affects nearly one in three students.

One structural advantage stands out: a student–teacher ratio of 14.4 gives Florence far smaller classes than Canon City (19.9) or Pueblo West (21.2), yet those extra resources have not produced better outcomes. Encouragingly, students from low-income families ranked in the 44th percentile statewide in 2025–2026, up from the 30th percentile two years earlier, and the school's overall ranking has improved for several straight years. For parents, the key things to watch are math instruction, attendance, and whether the school can carry its early high school reading success into the upper grades.