Montezuma

The Montezuma area has two schools serving 142 students: Montezuma Elementary serves prekindergarten through fifth grade, and South Gray High serves grades nine through twelve. The clearest shared academic concern is mathematics: both schools’ 2025–26 proficiency rates were well below Kansas’s 41% rate, and their equal-weighted average was 23%, 18 points lower.

Montezuma Elementary leads the two-school group in all three subjects, with 54% proficiency in ELA, 24% in math and 70% in science; compared with South Gray High, those results are higher by 4, 2 and 49 points, respectively. The elementary school’s science and ELA rates are also 32 and 8 points above state results, though its math is 17 points below. South Gray High is above the state in ELA by 4 points, but below in math by 20 and science by 17. Grade-level results add important detail: elementary third-grade ELA and math exceed state rates by 30 and 12 points, while fourth- and fifth-grade math falls short by 24 and 35 points.

Recent results show improvement in ELA overall but a widening math concern. From 2024–25 to 2025–26, the two-school ELA average rose 8 points, compared with a 1-point state increase; the math average fell 4 points while the state rose 2. Elementary math dropped 19 points, while high-school math gained 11. SchoolDigger’s reported percentile for Montezuma Elementary moved from 78 to 50 over the period, while South Gray High rose from 16 to 36. Other context differs: the high school has 59 students and a 5.8 student–teacher ratio, versus 83 students and a ratio of 10 at the elementary school; its free/reduced-lunch rate is 41%, compared with 31% at the elementary school. South Gray’s graduation rate was 96%, above the state’s 90%.