Springfield Junior/Senior High School

Springfield Junior/Senior High School serves 128 students in grades 6–12 in the small, rural community of Springfield, Colorado, and is part of the Springfield School District No. Re-4, which currently ranks in the bottom 6% of Colorado districts. It is the largest of the nearby rural schools, with nearly double the enrollment of Walsh High School (72 students) and far more than Vilas Undivided High School (38) or Pritchett High School (12). About 58.6% of students qualify for free/reduced lunch, and a low student–teacher ratio of 9.4 means relatively small class sizes.

Academically, Springfield sits below state averages but shows recent signs of improvement. In 2025–26, math proficiency jumped from 9.8% to 24.4%, and ELA rose from 17.6% to 26.8%, though both remain below the state (37.3% math and 44.7% ELA). Compared with Walsh High School, Springfield actually outperforms in math (24.4% vs. 14.3%) while lagging slightly in ELA (26.8% vs. 28.6%). College readiness scores swing widely from year to year because grade-level cohorts are tiny; reading/writing performance has sometimes met or exceeded state averages, while math on PSAT exams has consistently been a weak spot. The graduation rate improved to 82.4% from 66.7% a few years earlier, and the 1.5% dropout rate is below the state average.

The most urgent challenge is attendance. Springfield's chronic absenteeism rate of 35.7% is more than double that of Walsh High School (15.1%) and Vilas Undivided High School (15.8%), even though Springfield's poverty rate is slightly lower than both of those schools. This makes attendance the clearest differentiator and the biggest lever for improvement. With small class sizes and recent gains in math, graduation, and dropout rates, improving attendance could be a direct path to better outcomes for Springfield students.