Summary:
Hermiston School District 8 in Oregon has two middle schools, both serving grades 6–8: Armand Larive Middle School, with 722 students, and Sandstone Middle School, with 609 students — 1,331 middle schoolers in all. The two schools look very much alike on resources and poverty: free/reduced lunch is 91.69% at Armand Larive and 91.95% at Sandstone, per-student spending is $19,893 and $19,872, and class sizes differ more, with a student-teacher ratio of 16.6 at Armand Larive versus 19.6 at Sandstone. The district overall ranks 55th of 141 Oregon districts, at the 61st percentile with 3 stars.
Each school has a clear academic strength. Sandstone is stronger in ELA and science and holds the better latest rating: it ranks 180 of 371 (51st percentile, 3 stars), with all-grade ELA at 41.7% and science at 29.8%, both above district and near or above state, and 7th-grade ELA (48.5%) and 8th-grade ELA (44.2%) above district and state. Armand Larive is the math standout: all-grade math is 34.6%, above the district's 32.3% and the state's 32.9%, driven by 6th-grade math at 43.8%, well above district 38.1% and state 29.7%. However, Armand Larive's ELA (37.5%) and science (19.7%) trail Sandstone, district, and state, and it ranks 189 of 371 (49th percentile, 2 stars).
Attendance is a bright spot at both: chronic absenteeism is 29.6% at Armand Larive and 27.6% at Sandstone, better than the district's 34.5% and the state's 33.5%. Sandstone held 3 stars in 2023–24, 2024–25, and 2025–26, though its percentile slipped to 51; Armand Larive fell from 58th percentile and 3 stars in 2023–24 to 49th percentile and 2 stars in 2025–26. The biggest splits are 7th-grade ELA (Sandstone 48.5% vs Armand 36.7%) and 6th-grade math (Armand 43.8% vs Sandstone 32.0%), an 11.8-point gap each way, plus 8th-grade science, where Sandstone leads by 10.1 points. Similar poverty and funding, but different strengths.
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