Estelline Middle School - 03

Estelline Middle School - 03, an one-room-style 6-8 campus in Estelline, South Dakota, run under Estelline School District 28-2, teaches 60 students, covering grades 6 through 8. By comparison, South Dakota's public schools average about 187 students each, so Estelline Middle School - 03 sits 68% below that benchmark.

Estelline Middle School - 03 is one of 3 schools operated by Estelline School District 28-2, a district that hosts 292 students overall.

In terms of who attends, Estelline Middle School - 03 shows that the student body is overwhelmingly White (80%). The remainder breaks down as 15% Hispanic, 5% multiracial. The wider county runs roughly 92% White, putting the school's mix meaningfully less White than the area baseline.

On the income-and-resources front, On paper, Estelline Middle School - 03 has 4 full-time-equivalent teachers, translating to a class-load average of around 14.0:1. That tracks the state average closely. Roughly 37% of students at Estelline Middle School - 03 qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, a commonly cited indicator of low-income enrollment.

Adjusting for the school's free-and-reduced-lunch share, Estelline Middle School - 03 performs roughly as the BeatsExpectations model predicts for a school with this FRL share. The predicted value is around 48.0%, the actual is 42.3%, a residual of -5.8 points.

Across the wider county, Hamlin County reports that the typical household earns roughly $87,101 per year, 25% of adults hold a bachelor's degree or higher, and census figures put the poverty rate at about 5%. In all, Hamlin County runs 10 public schools (combined enrollment of about 1,533 students), of which Estelline Middle School - 03 is one.

Estelline High School - 01 is the nearest neighboring public school, about 0.0 miles from this campus. 2 of the 8 nearest public schools sit inside a five-mile radius. On composite proficiency, Estelline Middle School - 03 comes 4th of 5 in the immediate cluster, behind the nearby-schools average of 49.0%.

The campus sits in a rural setting.

Over the past 7-year window. Looking back 7 years, enrollment at Estelline Middle School - 03 has edged up 94%, going from 31 students in 2018 to 60 in 2025. Over the same period, the White share ticked down from 90% to 80%. Class-load math has rose: from 12.7:1 in 2018 to 14.0:1 in 2025.

On the community side, recent activity here tends to focus on sports schedules, lunch menu changes, and school spirit week. Anyone with firsthand experience at this school can post or comment.