Summary:
Neah-Kah-Nie School District 56 on Oregon's northern coast includes two elementary schools — Nehalem Elementary School and Garibaldi Elementary School — both serving grades PK–5 with a combined enrollment of 286 students. The district itself is a high performer, ranked 10th of 141 Oregon districts at the 93rd percentile with 5 stars, but its two elementary schools sit at noticeably different points in the rankings.
Nehalem Elementary School is the stronger of the two overall. It ranked 200th of 709 schools in 2025–2026 (72nd percentile, 4 stars) and outperformed Garibaldi in All Grades English Language Arts (55.7% vs. 44.6%), math (42.5% vs. 35.4%), and science (43.3% vs. 26.3%). Its 4th grade ELA proficiency of 66.7% is the highest figure in the data set, and its chronic absenteeism rate (32.9%) is below both the district (37.7%) and the state (33.5%). One caveat: Nehalem's ranking has slipped from the 85th percentile in 2023–2024 to the 72nd percentile in 2025–2026, though it has held 4 stars each year.
Garibaldi Elementary School has real bright spots despite ranking lower (355th of 709, 50th percentile, 3 stars). Its 5th grade ELA proficiency of 57.9% beats Nehalem (50.0%), the district (53.1%), and the state (47.1%), and it recovered from 2 stars in 2024–2025 to 3 stars in 2025–2026. Garibaldi also spends more per student ($33,325 vs. $26,184) and has a smaller student-teacher ratio (12.0 vs. 14.7), yet its overall scores remain lower. A shared weakness is 5th grade math, where Nehalem (27.6%), Garibaldi (26.3%), and the district (27.1%) all fall below the state (32.4%).
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