Philomath Academy

Philomath Academy is a small public alternative school serving grades K–12 at 2054 Applegate St in Philomath, Oregon, with 73 students enrolled in Philomath School District 17J, a mid-pack district that ranks 75th of 141 in the state. It is the smallest of three K–12 alternative or charter schools in the immediate area, alongside Kings Valley Charter School (193 students, 11.5 miles away) and Alsea Charter School (235 students, 16 miles away). With 73 students spread across 13 grade levels and a reported student–teacher ratio of 24.3, the staffing model works out to roughly three teachers for the entire K–12 span.

The most striking number is attendance: 63.1% of students were chronically absent in 2024–25, roughly double both the district (32.6%) and the state (33.5%), and the highest of the three nearby alternative schools. Test proficiency also trails the district and state in all three subjects — 25% in English language arts, 10.5% in math, and 12.5% in science. Eleventh grade is the weakest reported group, at 9.1% in ELA, under 5% in math, and 16.7% in science. Some grade-level results are suppressed by the state because of small class sizes, so those figures are unknown rather than zero. Free and reduced-price lunch data is not reported for this school, so its poverty context cannot be compared with its peers.

The clearest bright spot is graduation: the rate rose from 51.5% in 2021–22 to 69.2% in 2024–25, a 17.7-point gain that roughly halved the gap to the state. That still trails the district (89.2%) and the state (83.0%), and falls between Kings Valley Charter School (85.7%) and Alsea Charter School (47.8%). The peer comparison is genuinely counterintuitive — Kings Valley beats this school on graduation and attendance yet posts lower math and science scores with the lowest per-pupil spending of the three ($6,638, versus $11,692 here and $28,382 at Alsea). With cohorts this small, one student can move a rate by several points, so year-to-year swings are best read as noise around a trend.