School of Options and Applied Research Middle

School of Options and Applied Research Middle is a small public school in the rural community of Land O Lakes, WI, serving just 43 students in grades 5–8. As part of the Northland Pines School District, it operates in an area with no other schools within 20 miles, offering an intimate learning environment with a student-teacher ratio of 9.6. Because the total enrollment is so small across four grade levels, the school's year-to-year performance metrics and test scores can swing dramatically due to small cohort sizes.

Academically, the school outperformed the district average in most Forward Exam subjects in 2025–2026, with an unweighted average of 53.5% compared to the district's 48.6% and the state's 55.0%. Notable strengths include grade 6 and 8 English language arts, grade 7 math, and grade 8 social studies. However, grade 5 ELA, grade 8 math, and grade 8 science fell below state averages. The school's state rank has been highly volatile, landing at 333rd of 643 schools (2 stars) in 2025–2026, a partial rebound from a very weak 2024–2025. To support these efforts, per-student spending has risen sharply to $21,416 in 2024–2025, giving the school substantial financial resources and a low student-teacher ratio.

Despite adequate resources, the school faces significant challenges. Chronic absenteeism has spiked dramatically, rising from 3.9% in 2020–2021 to 23.3% in 2024–2025, a rate now higher than both the district (13.7%) and state (17.3%). Additionally, more than half of the students (51.16%) qualify for free or reduced lunch, up nearly 10 percentage points over two years. The academic effectiveness for low-socioeconomic students has dropped to the 24th percentile, posing one of the clearest equity concerns in the data. Overall, this is a small, resource-rich school with mixed academic results that is currently working to recover from a severe drop in performance and attendance.