Fairmont Elementary School

Fairmont Elementary School is a PK–6 public school at 714 Victoria Street in Fairmont, Minnesota, a small city in southern Minnesota's Martin County, serving 1,007 students — by far the largest elementary in its area, roughly twice the size of the next-largest neighbor and five to seven times larger than several nearby rural schools.

On Minnesota's statewide elementary ranking for 2025–2026, Fairmont Elementary School placed 552 of 869 schools (36th percentile, 2 stars). In 2025–26, 39.1% of students met standards in math, 42.2% in reading, and 24.6% in science — slightly above its own district, the Fairmont Area School District, in math and reading, and essentially at the state average in science. Among nearby schools, Blue Earth Area Elementary posts higher math (46.4%) and reading (49.2%) but weaker science (15.1%) and a lighter free/reduced-lunch load, while Granada Huntley East Chain Elementary School sits far lower at 24.7% math and 7.7% science. About 59.1% of Fairmont students qualify for free/reduced lunch — the highest rate among the graded public elementary peers — and its 15.3 student-to-teacher ratio is among the largest in the group.

The sharpest internal pattern is the slide in performance as grades climb. Third-grade math sits at 55.6%, close to the state mark, then falls to 30.0% in 5th grade and 20.3% in 6th; reading peaks at 50.8% in 5th grade before slipping to 35.5% in 6th. These are different groups of children in one year's snapshot, not the same students followed over time. Encouragingly, the school's low-income subgroup ranks in the 41st percentile statewide — above the school's own overall rank — and has improved each year, and school-wide results have recovered from a 31st-percentile low in 2023–24. The clearest room for improvement is in grades 5 and 6.