Best Public Schools in Zip Code 56601

ZIP code 56601 covers Bemidji, Minnesota, and the surrounding area, with 17 schools serving students from pre-kindergarten through high school — 8 elementary, 3 middle, 5 high, and 1 alternative school — enrolling 5,304 students combined. Enrollment is heavily concentrated: Bemidji Senior High (1,537), Bemidji Middle (967), and Gene Dillon Elementary School (667) together hold about 59.8% of the ZIP's students, while the median school has only 148. Most students — about 86.7% — attend Bemidji Public School District, with the rest spread across four charter districts. A dash in testing data means the state suppressed the figure to protect student privacy, so it is unknown rather than zero.

The strongest academic signals come from the elementaries. Lincoln Elementary leads the ZIP with 68.4% proficient in math and 51.3% in reading, both above district and state marks. Horace May Elementary posts 66.7% in math, and Solway Elementary is balanced at 59.5% math and 54.1% reading. Northern Elementary is solid in math at 54.4%. Gene Dillon Elementary School is improving, with reading at 51.2% and its rank percentile climbing to 56. Among older grades, Bemidji Middle holds the top rank percentile in the ZIP at 69, and Bemidji Senior High jumped from the 40s to the 67th percentile, with science at 36.7% — well above the district's 27.6% and the state's 25.5%.

Needs are most acute in the smaller schools. J.W. Smith Elementary has the lowest elementary proficiency in the ZIP at 18.5% in both math and reading, alongside an 82.35% free/reduced lunch rate. Aurora Waasakone Community of Learn (4th percentile), Trek North Middle School (13th), Voyageurs Expeditionary Middle School (9th), and Voyageurs Expeditionary School (3rd) all report scores far below state levels. Two exceptions to the low-proficiency pattern: Treknorth High School graduates 87.8% of students, above the state's 84.9%, despite low test scores, and First City School's dropout rate of 4.5% is close to the state's 4.2% even at a 27.2% graduation rate. Overall, only 5 of 16 reporting schools beat the state math mark, 4 of 16 beat reading, and 3 of 10 reporting science schools beat the science mark — with small cohorts making percentages volatile.