Douglas - EdTribune SD - South Dakota Education Data

South Dakota Has 1.10 Kindergartners for Every Senior

Wed, 08 Apr 2026 12:00:00 GMT

In this series: South Dakota 2025-26 Enrollment.

South Dakota's 12th grade class just set a record. At 9,964 students, the class of 2025 is the largest in the state's data history, 14.5% bigger than the 8,703 seniors in 2008-09. In any other context, that would be good news.

It is not good news. Those 9,964 seniors are being replaced at the bottom of the pipeline by a kindergarten class of 10,954, just 10% larger. In 2013, the ratio was 1.41 kindergartners for every 12th grader. Today it is 1.10. And because roughly one in six students who enter 9th grade in South Dakota do not appear in the 12th grade count three years later, that kindergarten class will likely produce only about 9,200 seniors when it reaches graduation in 2038.

The state's enrollment decline, in other words, has barely started.

The bulge moving through the building

South Dakota's K-5 enrollment peaked at 65,038 in 2017 and has fallen to 62,567, a loss of 2,471 students, or 3.8%. High school enrollment (grades 9-12) moved in the opposite direction over the same period: from 37,625 in 2017 to 41,507 in 2025, a gain of 3,882 students, or 10.3%.

The divergence is not a coincidence. It is the same cohort of students, aged by a decade. First grade peaked at 10,870 students in 2013. That cohort showed up as peak 2nd graders in 2015, peak 3rd graders in 2016, peak 4th graders in 2017, peak 5th graders in 2018, and so on through the system. The cohort hit 8th grade in 2020, 9th grade in 2021, and 11th grade in 2023. It is now producing the record 12th grade class of 2025.

Behind it, every entering class is smaller. Kindergarten enrollment hit 12,217 in 2021 and has dropped to 10,954 in four years, a 10.3% decline. First grade fell from its 2013 peak of 10,870 to 9,847 in 2025, a 9.4% loss. The cohorts now filling elementary classrooms are measurably smaller than the ones filling high school hallways, and each year the gap narrows further.

A ratio approaching parity

The kindergarten-to-12th-grade ratio captures the pipeline imbalance in a single number. In 2013, South Dakota had 1.41 kindergartners for every senior. That meant the system was being replenished faster than it was losing graduates, and total enrollment grew every year from 2006 through 2019.

By 2025, the ratio had fallen to 1.10. At that level, the incoming class barely exceeds the outgoing one before attrition. South Dakota loses roughly 15% to 20% of each cohort between 9th and 12th grade, a rate that has held at 80% to 85% persistence over the entire data period. Applied to today's kindergarten class of 10,954, that attrition rate projects a 12th grade class of approximately 9,200 in 2038, about 760 fewer seniors than the state has today.

The math is mechanical: if each entering class is smaller than the one leaving, total enrollment falls. South Dakota peaked at 141,429 students in 2022 and has lost 2,568 in three years. The pipeline says those losses will accelerate.

Birth rates and the kitchen table

The most direct driver is demographic. South Dakota's fertility rate, while still the highest in the nation at 65.6 births per 1,000 women, has fallen substantially from 78.1 per 1,000 in 2013. Fewer births five and six years ago mean fewer kindergartners today.

But births alone do not explain the full picture. Public school enrollment is also losing ground to alternative instruction, which has nearly tripled since 2015 to 12,433 students, now representing 7.6% of all children receiving education in the state. Governor Larry Rhoden attributed the shift to both declining birth rates and family preference:

"Regardless of where they receive their education, my goal as governor is to support innovation, not to stand in the way." — Dakota News Now, January 2026

The alternative instruction surge disproportionately affects the youngest grades. Families choosing to homeschool typically start at kindergarten entry, not midway through high school. That compounds the birth-rate decline in shrinking the elementary pipeline while leaving the graduating classes largely untouched.

Not every district faces the same squeeze

The pipeline inversion is not uniform. Of 39 districts large enough to analyze (100 or more combined kindergarten and 12th grade students), 11 already have more seniors than kindergartners. Wessington Springs has 19 kindergartners and 83 seniors, a ratio of 0.23. Aberdeen^↗, the state's third-largest city, has 268 kindergartners for 381 seniors, a ratio of 0.70. Rapid City^↗, the second-largest district, sits at 0.96, with 814 kindergartners and 850 seniors.

Suburban growth districts tell a different story. Brandon Valley^↗ has 493 kindergartners for 334 seniors, a ratio of 1.48. Tea Area^↗ stands at 1.47. Douglas^↗, outside Rapid City, registers 1.86. These districts are absorbing families from their urban cores, but that redistribution does not create new students statewide. It moves the decline from one district's ledger to another's.

Rural districts face the sharpest version of this arithmetic. South Dakota law requires reorganization when a district's K-12 enrollment drops to 100 or fewer students unless it qualifies as sparse. The Oldham-Ramona-Rutland district survived a dissolution vote by just four ballots in December 2025, 367 to 363. For small districts where the kindergarten class can be counted on two hands, a pipeline inversion is not a forecast. It is a viability question.

What the pipeline cannot show

The grade-level data establishes the direction and approximate magnitude of the decline ahead. It cannot establish timing precisely, because it does not account for interstate migration, which could accelerate or offset the trend. South Dakota's economy, anchored by agriculture and bolstered by no state income tax, has historically attracted working-age families. Whether that continues at a pace sufficient to offset birth-rate decline is an open question.

The data also cannot distinguish between students who leave the public system entirely and those who transfer between districts via open enrollment. A district with a K-to-12th ratio below 1.0 may be losing kindergartners to a neighboring district rather than to demographic decline. The state-level ratio, however, captures the net effect: fewer children entering the system than leaving it, regardless of where within the system they sit.

The graduating classes ahead

South Dakota's total enrollment of 138,861 sits 2,568 below its 2022 peak, a modest 1.8% decline. The pipeline says that modesty is temporary. Today's 1st graders number 9,847. Today's 2nd graders, 10,201. Today's kindergartners, 10,954. Every one of these classes is smaller than the corresponding high school class it will eventually replace.

South Dakota's per-pupil funding formula means that each lost student reduces a district's state aid allocation. For the 11 districts that already have fewer kindergartners than seniors, the fiscal arithmetic is straightforward: their funding base will shrink every year for the next decade as the record-sized graduating classes leave and the smaller entering classes take their place. Wessington Springs, with 19 kindergartners replacing 83 seniors, will lose three-quarters of its graduating class size in the pipeline. Aberdeen, with 268 kindergartners and 381 seniors, will lose nearly 30%. The pipeline data does not predict these losses. It guarantees them.

Detailed code that reproduces the analysis and figures in this article is available exclusively to EdTribune subscribers.

Rapid City Hits Its Lowest Enrollment on Record

Wed, 28 Jan 2026 12:00:00 GMT

In the 2024-25 school year, South Dakota's statewide enrollment stood 6.9% higher than it did 13 years ago. Its second-largest school district moved in the opposite direction. Rapid City Area Schools^↗ enrolled 12,040 students in 2024-25, the lowest figure in at least 19 years of state data and likely the lowest in more than three decades, according to a community demographic analysis that tracked the district back to 1991-92. The gap between Rapid City and the state it anchors has never been wider.

Since its 2012 peak of 13,982 students, the district has shed 1,942, a 13.9% decline. Six consecutive years of losses have erased any ambiguity about the trajectory: this is not a COVID dip that will self-correct. It is a structural contraction fed by a collapsing kindergarten pipeline, a bus system that cannot get students to school, and a community grappling with a federal civil rights investigation that found the district discriminated against its Native American students.

A decline the state did not share

What makes Rapid City's trajectory so unusual is the backdrop. South Dakota added 8,986 students between 2012 and 2025, a 6.9% increase. Rapid City lost 1,942 over the same period. Its share of statewide enrollment fell from 10.8% to 8.7%. In 2012, roughly one in nine South Dakota students attended Rapid City schools. Now it is closer to one in 11.

The divergence is even sharper among peers. Harrisburg^↗, a Sioux Falls suburb, more than doubled (+111.4%). Brandon Valley^↗ grew 50.5%. Huron^↗, powered by refugee resettlement, added 31.0%. Among the state's eight largest districts, only Watertown^↗ also declined, and its 11.6% loss was smaller than Rapid City's.

Sioux Falls^↗, the state's largest district, now enrolls more than twice as many students as Rapid City. In 2007, Rapid City was 67% of Sioux Falls' size. By 2025 it had fallen to 48.5%.

Six years of red ink

The year-over-year pattern makes the structural nature of the decline visible. The district has not posted a single year of growth since 2018, when it added 72 students. The 2020 loss of 800 students, the single worst year in the dataset, coincided with the pandemic. But the bleeding continued: losses of 66, 310, 120, and 273 followed in successive years.

The six-year streak is the longest sustained decline in the dataset. Before 2019, Rapid City's pattern was cyclical. It fell for two years, then rose for two or three. That pattern broke in 2019 and has not returned.

The bottom is falling out of the pipeline

The most consequential number in the dataset is not the all-time low itself. It is the kindergarten class. In 2012, 1,262 children entered Rapid City kindergarten. In 2025, that number was 814, a 35.5% decline. The district now enrolls fewer kindergartners than 12th graders (814 vs. 850), a K-to-12 ratio of 95.8 that signals the decline has not finished working through the system.

The grade-by-grade pattern is a textbook pipeline collapse. Every grade lost students between 2012 and 2025, but the losses are steepest at the youngest grades and taper as you move up: kindergarten fell 35.5%, first grade 28.9%, second grade 25.5%, third grade 22.8%. By the time you reach the middle school grades, losses are in the single digits. Grade 12 actually grew by 1.2%, reflecting the larger cohorts that entered the system a decade ago and are now aging out.

Elementary enrollment (PK through fifth grade) dropped by 1,518 students, a 21.9% decline that accounts for 78% of the district's total losses. Middle school enrollment fell 7.7%. High school enrollment fell 4.7%. When the current kindergarten cohort reaches high school, the district will be substantially smaller than it is today.

Where the students went

The RCAS Forward demographic study, an independent community analysis, identified five destinations for departing students: homeschooling, private schools, transfers to nearby public districts, early graduations, and dropouts. South Dakota allows open enrollment transfers between any public districts in the state, and the neighboring Douglas^↗ and Meade^↗ districts have both grown in recent years.

Former Assistant Superintendent Dave Janak offered a demographic explanation that the community analysis highlighted: while Rapid City's overall population has grown, much of that growth comes from retirees rather than families with school-age children. Pennington County added residents in 2023-24, but the Dakota Institute found the rate of growth slowed substantially compared to prior years, with Pennington and Minnehaha counties together adding just 2,320 residents versus 4,682 the year before.

Transportation may also be pushing families away. The district is 12 bus drivers short of full staffing and eliminated more than 100 bus stops for the 2025-26 school year, with many buses operating at just 50% capacity. SDPB reported that the district's attendance rate stands at 92.87%, with North Middle School, Central High School, and alternative programs falling below 90%. Chronic absenteeism has nearly doubled statewide since 2019, and Pennington County officials have shifted to intervention over punishment, citing housing instability and transportation barriers as root causes.

A civil rights shadow

The enrollment data cannot isolate how many families have left because of the district's racial climate. But the timeline is suggestive. A U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights compliance review, initiated in December 2010, found in May 2024 that Native American students faced pervasive discipline disparities: they were 4.83 times more likely to be suspended out of school than white peers and 5.84 times more likely to be arrested. Only 2.48% of advanced learning middle school students were Native American, despite Native American students representing 18% of the middle school population.

"The agreement exists because the Rapid City Area school board needed to be held accountable." — Nick Tilsen, founder of NDN Collective, quoted by DRG News

The district agreed to hire a discipline equity supervisor and an advanced learning coordinator, establish a standing committee with Native American community members, and revise its discipline and truancy policies. In April 2025, the Trump administration withdrew from the resolution agreement, citing that it was "wrongly rooted in efforts to promote diversity, equity and inclusion."

Native American students make up 17.8% of Rapid City's enrollment, roughly 2,139 students. The district's demographic composition, with 57.1% white students, 12.1% multiracial, and 10.6% Hispanic, makes it one of the most diverse in a state where many districts enroll overwhelmingly white student bodies. Whether the federal withdrawal changes the district's implementation of the reforms it had agreed to is an open question.

The fiscal arithmetic

South Dakota's school funding formula is built on a target teacher salary and student-teacher ratio, which means enrollment losses translate directly into reduced state aid. Each student who leaves shrinks the district's formula allocation, while the fixed costs of buildings, bus fleets, and administrative staff remain.

The operational bind is visible in the grade data. Elementary schools have lost more than a fifth of their students, but buildings, heating systems, and administrative staff do not scale down proportionally. Meanwhile, Superintendent Jamie Jo Thompson noted that some elementary schools are actually at or near capacity, with enrollment increases at schools like Valley View even as the district total falls. The decline is not uniform across buildings, which makes consolidation decisions politically and logistically complex.

What to watch

The 814 kindergartners who entered Rapid City schools in fall 2024 will determine the district's enrollment trajectory for the next 13 years. If the kindergarten class continues to shrink at its recent pace, the district could fall below 11,000 students within three to four years, potentially triggering facility closures or consolidations that no school board welcomes.

The bus driver shortage and chronic absenteeism may be compounding the enrollment decline, or they may be symptoms of a community where fewer families see the public schools as their default choice. Either way, Rapid City is growing as a city while its school district is not. That gap, now in its sixth consecutive year, is the central fact any incoming superintendent, school board candidate, or state legislator must contend with.

Detailed code that reproduces the analysis and figures in this article is available exclusively to EdTribune subscribers.