Schools in Zip Code 57249

Schools in ZIP code 57249 include three Lake Preston schools serving prekindergarten through grade 12: an elementary school (PK–5), a middle school (6–8) and a high school (9–12). The elementary and middle schools are above South Dakota’s all-grades results in both Smarter Balanced subjects: elementary students reached 58% in ELA and 82% in math, compared with state rates of 49% and 44%; middle students reached 66% in ELA and 53% in math. The high school’s current 11th-grade ACT results are more mixed: ELA was 20% against 48% statewide, while math was 50% against 34% and science 50% against 45%. The most important area-wide finding is that the lower schools’ strongest shared advantage is in math, while high-school ELA is a notable concern.

Lake Preston Elementary stands out in mathematics: its fourth-grade proficiency was 88%, 39 points above the state, and fifth-grade proficiency was 79%, 36 points above. Lake Preston Middle stands out for consistent ELA results above the state in all three tested grades, with its largest advantage—23 points—in eighth grade; its eighth-grade science result was 75%, 35 points above the state. SchoolDigger ranked the middle school 19th of 151 statewide and the elementary school 22nd of 203 in 2025–2026. The clearest current weakness is the high school’s ELA result, 28 points below the state, despite above-state ACT math and science and a 100% graduation rate, versus 88% statewide. SchoolDigger ranked the high school 67th of 130.

Recent results show the elementary and middle schools remain above state rates, but their average advantage narrowed from the prior year, especially in math: the average math gap fell by 10 points, while the average ELA gap fell by 2 points. Middle-school all-grades results had the larger declines: math fell 15 points and ELA fell 8; elementary math fell 4 points, while its ELA result was nearly unchanged. SchoolDigger’s rankings also shifted: the elementary school’s percentile moved from 86th to 89th over three years, the middle school’s from 95th to 87th, and the high school’s from 51st to 48th after peaking at 89th. For context, 2024–2025 free/reduced lunch eligibility was 39% at the elementary school, 39% at the middle school and 22% at the high school; student-teacher ratios were 9.1, 8.4 and 5.5, respectively. The high school’s prior-year test results cannot be directly compared with its current results.