Riggins Elementary School

Riggins Elementary School serves 92 students in grades PK–5 in the small, rural community of Riggins, Idaho, and is part of the Salmon River Joint School District, with no other schools within 20 miles.

The school's academic performance has been highly volatile from year to year. In 2024-25, math proficiency reached 51.4%, outperforming both the district (42.7%) and state (43.1%). However, in 2025-26, both math and English language arts proficiency dropped to 37%, with ELA falling 17 points below the state average of 54%. With such a small student body, a single cohort can swing these numbers dramatically. While Riggins Elementary School has climbed from near the bottom of Idaho's elementary school rankings in 2008-09 to its current 260th place out of 346 schools (25th percentile), it remains below its best recent showing in 2011-12. On the positive side, the school maintains a low student-teacher ratio of about 11.5 students per teacher and spends roughly $20,090 per student, yet these resources have not consistently translated into higher test scores.

Attendance and economic trends are important context for parents. Chronic absenteeism spiked to 36.5% in 2022-23 but dropped sharply to 9.1% in 2024-25—better than both the district (19.0%) and state (14.6%)—before rising again to 15.7% in 2025-26. Meanwhile, the share of students eligible for free or reduced lunch jumped from 45.7% in 2022-23 to 68.5% in 2024-25, meaning nearly seven in ten students now come from low-income households. Grade-level data for 2025-26 shows 4th grade math and ELA at 44.4% proficiency and 5th grade science at 31.3%, the latter well below the state's 44%. Given the school's small size, these trends deserve careful monitoring, as individual students can have an outsized effect on the school's overall data.