Summary:
ZIP code 55309 is home to six schools serving pre-kindergarten through 12th grade, all part of the Big Lake Public School District, which enrolls about 3,190 students and ranks 188 of 458 in Minnesota — the 59th percentile, with 3 stars. Four are traditional brick-and-mortar schools with 3,048 students, and two are online programs with 142 students, roughly 4.5% of the ZIP's enrollment. The largest school is Big Lake Senior High at 902 students; the smallest is Big Lake Online K-5 at 24.
Big Lake Middle School (632 students) is the strongest traditional school academically, ranking in the 67th percentile with 3 stars in 2025-2026 and reaching the 76th percentile with 4 stars the year before; its 8th graders score 54.9% proficient in math and 60.8% in reading, both above the state. Independence Elementary (758 students) leads the ZIP in math at 51.1% across all grades, above district and state, but trails the state in reading and science. Big Lake Senior High posts a 96.2% graduation rate and a 2.3% dropout rate, both better than the state's 84.9% and 4.2%, yet its math proficiency is only 29.0%, well below district and state.
The two online schools look different again. Big Lake Online 6-12 has a 91.4% graduation rate, above the state, but math and reading proficiency far below district and state, with science suppressed; it also has the ZIP's highest free/reduced lunch rate at 43.22%. Big Lake Online K-5 has just 24 students, with reading above state but math far below. Liberty Elementary, serving PK-2, has no current test data but the lowest student-teacher ratio at 13.1. Several figures are suppressed for privacy — treat them as unknown, not as zero.
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