Elementary Schools in Britton-Hecla School District 45-4

Elementary schools in Britton-Hecla School District 45-4 include three small schools: Britton-Hecla Elementary - 02 serves kindergarten through grade 5, while Westwood Rural Elementary - 05 and Sunset Colony Elementary - 04 serve kindergarten through grade 8. Their enrollments range from 32 to 166 students. The clearest area-wide strength is mathematics: the three-school average rose from 39% in 2024–2025 to 48% in 2025–2026, moving from 4 percentage points below the state to 5 points above it.

Sunset Colony leads current mathematics results at 56%, followed by Westwood Rural at 47% and Britton-Hecla Elementary at 43%; Sunset is 13 points above Britton-Hecla and 8 above Westwood. ELA results are closer: Sunset’s 44.5% is just 1 point above Britton-Hecla’s 43.7%, while Westwood is lowest at 37%, 8 points below Sunset. The state rates were 44% in mathematics and 49% in ELA, so the group’s average was stronger than the state in mathematics but remained below it in ELA.

Results improved in ELA at all three schools from 2024–2025 to 2025–2026: by 1 point at Britton-Hecla, 4 at Westwood and 7 at Sunset. Mathematics rose 20 points at Westwood and 12 at Sunset, but fell 3 points at Britton-Hecla. School context also differs: in 2024–2025, free/reduced lunch eligible shares were 23% at Britton-Hecla, 92% at Westwood and 91% at Sunset; student-teacher ratios were 10.6, 19.0 and 18.9, respectively. SchoolDigger lists the district at rank 99 of 126 in South Dakota, in the 21st percentile, with one star. Britton-Hecla’s fifth-grade science result fell from 60% to 29%; the other schools’ 2025–2026 science results are suppressed. Comparisons have limits because schools serve different grade spans, enrollments are small, and school-level grade-specific results for the K–8 schools are suppressed.