Best Elementary Schools in Zip Code 83840

Zip code 83840, located in the small North Idaho community of Kootenai, is home to just one elementary school: Kootenai Elementary School, a K-6 school with 367 students in the Lake Pend Oreille School District. Because it is the only elementary school in the area, this analysis focuses on how Kootenai Elementary performs relative to its district and statewide averages. The school serves a substantial economically diverse population, with 44.69% of students qualifying for free or reduced-price lunch.

Kootenai Elementary performs above the Idaho state average in most subjects but trails its own district in nearly every category. In the 2025-2026 school year, all-grades math proficiency was 50.2% (vs. 43.1% statewide) and ELA proficiency was 56.2% (vs. 54.0% statewide). The school's biggest strength is 3rd-grade math, where 67.3% of students are proficient — 16.4 points above the state and 7.7 points above the district. ELA performance is stable and strong across grades, reaching 61.4% proficiency in 6th grade, above both district and state averages. The most notable concern is a 5th-grade slump: math proficiency drops from 67.3% in 3rd grade to 36.1% in 5th grade (below the state's 42.2%), and 5th-grade science proficiency is just 36.1% vs. the district's 52.4%.

Over the past three years, Kootenai Elementary has improved its SchoolDigger ranking from the 46th percentile (2 stars) to the 54th percentile (3 stars), even as the number of ranked schools in Idaho grew from 301 to 346. The district itself is high-performing — Lake Pend Oreille is ranked 22nd out of 101 Idaho districts with a 4-star rating — which helps explain why Kootenai's scores, while above state averages, look modest in comparison. The student-teacher ratio is 16:1, and per-student spending data from 2018-2019 shows $8,625. Parents should view Kootenai Elementary as a solid, improving school with excellent early math instruction and strong ELA outcomes, though the upper-elementary math and science dip is worth monitoring. The school also has limited recent data on chronic absenteeism, so current attendance trends are unclear.