Summary:
Fairfield, Idaho, is a small rural community served by just two public schools — Camas County Elementary/Junior High School and Camas County High School — both operated by the Camas County District and sharing a single campus on Soldier Road. Together, the two schools enroll about 150 students, with the elementary/junior high serving grades PK–8 (105 students) and the high school serving grades 9–12 (45 students). The district ranks 44th out of 101 Idaho districts, placing it just above the median with a 3-star rating.
The two schools present different profiles. Camas County High School earned an impressive 6th-place ranking in Idaho back in 2012–2013 (96th percentile, 5 stars), though no recent ranking is available for the school. It also spends $20,145 per student — 83% more than the elementary school's $11,008 — largely because fixed costs are spread across a very small student body. The high school has a low student-teacher ratio of 8.1 and its graduation rate of 82.5% exactly matches the state average. Camas County Elementary/Junior High School, meanwhile, has shown steady improvement, climbing from the 28th percentile (2011–2012) to the 49th percentile (2025–2026). It outperforms the state in 3rd, 5th, and 8th grade math, but lags in every reported ELA subject.
Both schools maintain favorable student-teacher ratios (10.3 at the elementary/junior high, 8.1 at the high school), a real strength for a rural district, though it also drives up per-student costs. Chronic absenteeism is a concern: it was 18.7% at the elementary/junior high and 22.2% at the high school in 2020–2021, both above the state's latest rate of 13.8%. About one-third of students are economically disadvantaged, with 34.29% of elementary/junior high students and 37.78% of high school students eligible for free or reduced lunch. With such small enrollments, single cohorts can cause large swings in test scores and rankings from year to year, so families should interpret any single year's data with that in mind.
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