Jefferson Elementary - 09

Jefferson Elementary - 09 is a heavily attended elementary-level community in Watertown, South Dakota, run under Watertown School District 14-4. The school instructs 333 students in grades 1 through 4. By comparison, South Dakota's public schools average about 204 students each, so Jefferson Elementary - 09 sits 63% bigger than that benchmark.

Within Watertown School District 14-4, which oversees 9 schools and 3,754 students, Jefferson Elementary - 09 is one campus in the system.

On demographics, Jefferson Elementary - 09 reports that 83% of students identify as White, making the school strongly White-majority; the rest comes out to 6% multiracial, 6% Native American, 4% Hispanic.

On the income-and-resources front, Jefferson Elementary - 09 shows 23 full-time-equivalent teachers, putting the student-to-teacher ratio at about 14.3:1. That figure is tighter than the state norm's 15.4:1 average. Roughly 33% of students at Jefferson Elementary - 09 qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, a number frequently used as a low-income enrollment indicator.

After controlling for student poverty, Jefferson Elementary - 09 performs roughly as the BeatsExpectations model predicts for a school with this FRL share. The predicted value is around 49.6%, the actual is 58.6%, a residual of +9.0 points.

In the surrounding community, ACS estimates for Codington County put the typical household earns roughly $72,727 per year, about 21% of the adult population holds a bachelor's degree or above, and the poverty rate sits near 5%. Across Codington County's 18 public schools (combined enrollment of about 4,561 students), Jefferson Elementary - 09 is one campus in the mix.

Watertown Middle School - 02 is the nearest neighboring public school, about 0.8 miles from this campus. Counting just inside five miles, 7 other public schools cluster around Jefferson Elementary - 09. Ranking that nearby cluster on reported proficiency puts Jefferson Elementary - 09 at 2nd of 5; the average score across the group is 52.4%.

Jefferson Elementary - 09 operates from a small-town location.

Looking at the recent track record. Jefferson Elementary - 09's enrollment has shrank 12% since 2018, when it stood at 380 (now 333). Over the same period, the White share decreased from 90% to 83%. Class-load math has narrowed: from 17.6:1 in 2018 to 14.3:1 in 2025.

On allk12, 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.