Summary:
The city of Heyburn, Idaho, is served by just two public schools in the Minidoka County Joint District: Heyburn Elementary School (grades PK–5, 508 students) and Mt Harrison High School (grades 9–12, 122 students), with no middle school in between. The district itself ranks 94th out of 101 Idaho districts (bottom 7%), and both schools serve high-poverty populations, with roughly two-thirds of students qualifying for free/reduced lunch.
At Heyburn Elementary, math and ELA proficiency are well below state averages: 28.2% and 35.2% proficient, respectively, compared to state rates of 43.1% and 54.0%. Grade-level data reveal a sharp 5th-grade slump — math proficiency drops from 35.2% in 4th grade to just 17.4% in 5th grade, and 5th-grade science proficiency is only 18.6%. Meanwhile, 4th graders actually outperform the district average in both math and ELA. Chronic absenteeism is elevated at 18.7% (state: 13.8%), and the school’s statewide ranking has slipped from the 12th percentile to the 5th percentile over the past year.
Across town, Mt Harrison High School faces more serious challenges. Its chronic absenteeism rate is 41.8% — roughly three times the state average — meaning nearly half of students are regularly missing school. No recent test scores are available for the high school, and the 82.5% graduation rate matches the district and state figures exactly, likely a data artifact. Positively, the school spends more per student ($10,010 vs. $6,843) and has a lower student-teacher ratio (11.6 vs. 20.1) than the elementary school, but historically it has ranked in the bottom 1% of Idaho high schools. The absence of any middle school data makes it hard to pinpoint where academic declines begin, but the extreme absenteeism at Mt Harrison is the most urgent issue facing parents in Heyburn.
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