Newell Elementary - 02

Newell Elementary - 02 operates as a tight-knit elementary-level community in Newell, South Dakota, overseen by Newell School District 09-2. Current enrollment sits at 124 students spanning grades pre-K through 5. By comparison, South Dakota's public schools average about 204 students each, so Newell Elementary - 02 sits 39% below that benchmark.

Newell Elementary - 02 is one of 3 schools operated by Newell School District 09-2, a district that hosts 230 students overall.

For racial and ethnic makeup, Newell Elementary - 02 reports that the student body is overwhelmingly White (94%); the rest breaks down as 2% Native American.

On the resource side, Staff filings list 9 full-time-equivalent teachers, which works out to roughly 13.2:1 students per teacher. The state averages around 15.4:1, so this campus is tighter than the state norm typical. About 48% of enrolled students meet the income threshold for free or reduced-price lunch, which schools and policymakers use as a rough income-mix signal.

Adjusting for the school's free-and-reduced-lunch share, Newell Elementary - 02 performs roughly as the BeatsExpectations model predicts for a school with this FRL share. The predicted value is around 43.5%, the actual is 48.9%, a residual of +5.3 points.

In the surrounding community, the surrounding county (Butte County) shows that the typical household earns roughly $75,652 per year, 20% of adults hold a bachelor's degree or higher, and the poverty rate sits near 7%. In all, Butte County runs 8 public schools (combined enrollment of about 1,504 students), of which Newell Elementary - 02 is one.

Newell Middle School - 04 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, Newell Elementary - 02 comes 3rd of 5 in the immediate cluster, below the nearby-schools average of 52.6%.

Geographically, the school is in a rural area.

Five-year trend. Looking back 7 years, enrollment at Newell Elementary - 02 has edged down 9%, going from 137 students in 2018 to 124 in 2025. White enrollment moved from 80% to 94% across the same window.

On the community side, members of the Newell Elementary - 02 community share and discuss enrollment questions, classroom assignments, and PTA news. Members of the school community can share what they know.