Summary:
Zip code 80440 (Fairplay, Colorado) is home to just one middle school—South Park Middle School, part of Park County School District No. Re-2—a small rural school serving 87 students in grades 6–8 with a favorable 11.6:1 student-teacher ratio.
For parents, the most important takeaway is that South Park Middle School has a clear academic strength in English Language Arts. In the most recent testing year, 46.8% of students were proficient in ELA, which beats both the district (34.1%) and the state (44.7%). That proficiency also improves as students advance: 40% of 6th graders, 50% of 7th graders, and 52.2% of 8th graders met ELA expectations. Math is the weaker subject, with 31.6% proficiency—better than the district's 24.7% but below the state's 37.3%. Notably, ELA scores improved by over 4 points year-over-year while math slipped by 3 points, and the school's state ranking rose from the 54th to the 62nd percentile, though it hasn't yet reclaimed its previous 65th-percentile peak from two years ago. The school has held a steady 3-star rating throughout.
Beyond academics, about 42.5% of students qualify for free or reduced lunch, reflecting a significant economically disadvantaged population, yet the school still outperforms its district in both subjects. Chronic absenteeism affects 24.5% of students—roughly 20–25 kids—which is concerning, but it's actually better than both the district (31.1%) and state (28.4%) averages. The dropout rate is 0%. Overall, South Park Middle School offers strong literacy instruction, personalized attention thanks to small class sizes, and solid district-relative performance, with math proficiency and chronic absenteeism being the two areas most worth monitoring.
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