Todd County
A High School That Didn't Exist Built Pine Ridge's 49% Enrollment Surge
In a state where most districts are shrinking, one school district on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation grew by 564 students between 2007 and 2025, a 49.4% increase. The Oglala Lakota County School Di...
14,000 Native Students, 17 Years of Standing Still
South Dakota enrolled 14,477 Native American students in 2008. In 2025, the number was 14,283. That is 194 fewer students over 17 years, a decline of 1.3%.
South Dakota Schools Lost 13 Points of White Share in 17 Years
In the 2007-08 school year, roughly 82 of every 100 students in South Dakota's public schools were white. By 2024-25, that figure had fallen to 69. The 13.2 percentage-point drop did not happen becaus...
27 South Dakota Districts Hit Record Lows
Rapid City Area Schools, the second-largest district in South Dakota, enrolled 12,040 students in 2024-25. That is the lowest figure in the district's recorded history, down 13.9% from its 2012 peak o...
South Dakota Gained Students During COVID. Now the Bill Is Coming Due.
Most states lost students during the pandemic. South Dakota added them.
Kindergarten Down 9% in Three Years
In 2013, South Dakota enrolled 141 kindergartners for every 100 high school seniors. The incoming class was so much larger than the outgoing one that total enrollment grew every year for more than a d...