Butte Falls Charter School

Butte Falls Charter School is a very small alternative K–12 public school serving 119 students in the rural southern Oregon community of Butte Falls, and it is the only school in Butte Falls School District 91, so school and district figures are largely identical. It serves a high-poverty population: 81.51% of students qualified for free or reduced-price lunch in 2024–25, a share that has held steady around 80–82% over the previous three years. Classes are small, with a student-teacher ratio of 10.3, and per-student spending is very high at $38,864, up from $24,391 in 2021–22 — roughly a 59% increase in four years.

Outcomes are mixed. The 2024–25 graduation rate was 62.5%, well below Oregon's 83.0% and the lowest of three nearby alternative schools: Prospect Charter School at 85.7% and Crater Lake Academy at 92.0%. Chronic absenteeism was 37.4%, above the state's 33.5% but better than Prospect's 49.2%; Crater Lake's was 25.4%. On 2025–26 all-grades state tests, proficiency was 31.4% in English language arts, 27.5% in math, and 13.6% in science, against state rates of 43.8%, 32.9%, and 30.6%. Math is a relative strength — 27.5% is well above Prospect's 9.6% and Crater Lake's 12.7% — while science is the weakest area.

With only 119 students, rates swing easily with a few students, and many grade-level results are suppressed for privacy, including 11th-grade ELA, math, and science; those should be treated as unknown rather than as zeros or failures. Graduation rates have ranged from 56.2% to 83.3% over five years, so the recent 62.5% may be partly cohort-specific. Fifth grade stands out as a weak spot across subjects, with ELA and math both at 8.3% and science under 5%. Notably, the school's very high spending and small classes have not uniformly translated into stronger results than nearby schools.