Summary:
Zip code 83338 in Jerome, Idaho, is served by two public high schools within the Jerome Joint District: Jerome High School, a comprehensive high school of 1,140 students in grades 9–12, and Falls City Academy, a much smaller school of 75 students spanning grades 6–12 that appears to serve an alternative or at-risk population.
The two schools differ dramatically in size and academic profile. Jerome High School is the dominant school in the area and the only one with a complete set of accountability data. It shows a mixed picture: ELA proficiency is a relative bright spot at 45.8%, well above the district's 30.7%, though below the state's 53.9%. Math is a clear weakness at just 20.1% proficiency, far below the state's 43.1%. Science proficiency sits at 29.2%. Falls City Academy, by contrast, reports no test scores, no chronic absenteeism data, and no school-level ranking—a common situation for small schools where data may be suppressed for privacy. However, Falls City Academy does serve a more economically disadvantaged population, with 68% of students qualifying for free/reduced-price lunch compared to 50.9% at Jerome High School, while also maintaining a lower student-teacher ratio of 11.7 versus 19.1.
Both schools report an identical 82.5% graduation rate, matching the district and state averages. Jerome High School's chronic absenteeism rate of 12.9% is slightly better than both the district (13.5%) and state (13.8%), a positive sign given that over half of its students qualify for free/reduced lunch. The school's state ranking improved notably from the 7th percentile in 2021–2023 to the 28th percentile in 2023–2024 (1 star), although it—and the entire Jerome Joint District, ranked 95th of 101 Idaho districts—remains in a low-performing category statewide. The most urgent area for improvement is clearly mathematics at Jerome High School, where the 25.7-percentage-point gap between ELA and math proficiency is more than double the statewide gap.
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