Fessenden-Bowdon 25

Fessenden-Bowdon 25 has two schools serving PK–12: Fessenden-Bowdon Elementary School serves PK–8, and Fessenden-Bowdon High School serves grades 9–12. The elementary school has 140 students; the high school has 56. The central finding is a sharp contrast in current results and recent trends: elementary proficiency is above state results in all three subjects, while high-school math is below the state and has dropped substantially.

Fessenden-Bowdon Elementary stands out most clearly against the state: its 2025–26 all-grade results were 6–14 percentage points above state math, 13–21 points above state reading, and 31–49 points above state science. Reading is especially strong in 4th, 7th and 8th grades, where results were 80–98%, compared with state results of 59%, 55% and 54%. At the high school, reading was 3–21 points above the state, but math was 5–34 points below. Its science result was under 40%, versus 39% statewide, so the comparison does not establish whether it was higher or lower. The high school’s 93.8% graduation rate was 6.8 points above the state rate.

Recent changes reinforce the contrast: from 2024–25 to 2025–26, elementary results rose 11–19 points in math, 21–29 in reading and 21–39 in science; high-school math fell 6–35 points, reading ranged from down 15 points to up 4, and science fell by more than 5 points. SchoolDigger rankings also shifted: the elementary school ranked 51st of 216 schools in 2025–26, while the high school ranked 83rd of 129 after reaching 4th of 125 the prior year. In 2024–25, student-teacher ratios were 11.6 at the elementary school and 11.0 at the high school; both reported free/reduced lunch eligible for 2024–25, at 15.7% and 16.1%, respectively. Because the schools serve different grade spans, their all-grade scores are not direct like-for-like comparisons.