Helena Elem
East Helena Grew 54% in Seven Years
Superintendent Dan Rispens told the Boulder Monitor in late 2024 that the district was buying buses. Not replacing old ones. Adding routes. East Helena K-12 had gone from four bus routes in 2001 to 10...
Helena HS Lost More Students Than Any Montana High School
Hawthorne Elementary, Helena's oldest school, was built in 1921 on Madison Avenue when the capital city's population was booming alongside the mining and railroad industries. In spring 2025, the schoo...
Hispanic Students Are Montana's Only Growing Demographic
In West Yellowstone, the gateway town where Yellowstone National Park meets U.S. Highway 20, nearly half the students in the local school are Hispanic. That share, 47.0%, would be unremarkable in New ...
116 Montana Districts Hit Record-Low Enrollment
In 2023, 25 Montana school districts sat at their all-time low enrollment. Three years later, that number has more than quadrupled to 116. Livingston Elem, a district that enrolled 1,000 students a de...
Montana Lost 8,500 Students in Three Years
The Billings school board voted 5-1 in January 2024 to close Washington Elementary. The building was not condemned. It was not damaged. The district simply could not justify staffing a school while en...