Schools in Zip Code 56031

Zip code 56031 in Fairmont, Minnesota contains five schools serving 1,935 students across two districts: the Fairmont Area School District (two schools, 1,846 students) and the Southern Plains Education Coop. district (three schools, 89 students). The grade setup is unusual because there is no separate middle school — Fairmont Elementary School serves PK–6 with 1,007 students, and Fairmont Junior/Senior High School serves 7–12 with 839 students. The remaining three are small cooperative programs: Southern Plains Area Learning Cntr. (grades 8–12, 47 students), Southern Plains Bridges (alternative K–12, 23 students), and Southern Plains Education Coop. (PK–K, 19 students).

Academically, most schools trail state averages in math and reading. Fairmont Elementary reports 39.1% math, 42.2% reading, and 24.6% science, versus state rates of 44.9%, 48.6%, and 25.5%. Fairmont Junior/Senior High reports 36.8% math and 38.0% reading but beats the state in science at 27.5%, and its graduation rate of 85.0% essentially matches the state's 84.9%. Its dropout rate of 10.7%, though, is more than double the state's 4.2%. The Southern Plains programs serve a much higher-poverty population and report very low proficiency: 0% math at Southern Plains Area Learning Cntr. (with reading and science suppressed) and 10% math and 9.1% reading at Southern Plains Bridges. The PK–K program has no test data, as expected.

Class sizes vary widely. Fairmont Junior/Senior High has the highest student-teacher ratio at 19.5, Fairmont Elementary is at 15.3, and Southern Plains Bridges has the lowest at 4.1. Free/reduced-lunch rates range from 46.96% at Fairmont Junior/Senior High and 59.09% at Fairmont Elementary to 68.42%, 82.98%, and 86.96% at the three Southern Plains schools. One encouraging trend: science proficiency rose at both Fairmont schools from 2024–2025 to 2025–2026. Because the Southern Plains schools enroll so few students, their results swing sharply year to year, and state-suppressed figures should be treated as unknown rather than as zero.