Summary:
Zip code 80645 in La Salle, Colorado, is served by a single public elementary school, Pete Mirich Elementary School, which enrolls 358 students in grades PK through 5 and is part of Weld County Reorganized School District No. Re-1. Because it is the only school in the zip code, there are no nearby schools to compare it to, so the most useful benchmarks are the district and state averages.
Pete Mirich Elementary School shows a mixed but interesting performance profile. The school's strongest subject is math, where 31.1% of students are proficient, well above the district's 23.9% but below the state's 37.3%. Fourth grade math is a particular highlight at 41.9% proficiency, beating both district and state averages. The school also made a remarkable leap in math proficiency this year, jumping 9.6 percentage points from 21.5% to 31.1%. English Language Arts is the biggest challenge, with 30.1% proficiency compared to 33.3% for the district and 44.7% for the state. Fifth grade ELA is the strongest grade level at 45.7%, nearly matching the state's 49.9%. Despite a high poverty rate — 57.3% of students qualify for free or reduced lunch — chronic absenteeism is 23.4%, which is better than both the district (28.7%) and the state (28.4%).
The school's state ranking has been somewhat volatile, bouncing between the 29th and 39th percentiles over the past three years, with the current ranking at the 35th percentile (2 stars). Scores tend to be stronger in 4th and 5th grade than in 3rd grade, suggesting that students make accelerated progress in the upper elementary years. The data also includes sixth-grade scores, though the school's grade span is listed as PK-5, which may reflect a small group of older students housed at the elementary site. For parents, the key takeaway is that Pete Mirich is a mid-tier school with a clear strength in math and a clear opportunity for improvement in reading, but with attendance outcomes that are genuinely positive given the school's economic challenges.
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