Why St. Paul's

Arguably, the most important factors of your child’s academic success is their school climate. Our small class sizes, highly qualified staff, and involved families have given St. Paul’s a tradition of academic excellence.

St. Paul’s goal is to produce lifelong learners, not to teach to a test. Even so, students at St. Paul’s have been shown to improve against their South Dakota peers each year they are in school. This leads to our graduates vastly outscoring their South Dakota peers in the nationwide Smarter Balanced summative test. As you can see in the charts to the right, nearly 80% of St. Paul’s students leave our school proficient in Math and English Language Arts (ELA), compared to about 40% of SD students.

One of the first things you will notice when you step into our building is the strong community feel it has. This culture exists because of the smaller size of our school (119 students in K-8) and our focus on sharing the Gospel message of Jesus' love.

Studies show that students are much more likely to succeed when they feel safe, loved, and valuable. They also show that small classrooms and school sizes allow students to practice and develop deeper relationships with their peers than they would at a larger school. We supplement this by also teaching social-emotional skills your child needs to succeed in life.

We believe that involved students tend to be successful students. We strive to make extra-curricular activities available to all age levels. Almost 90% of our students engaged in extracurricular activities throughout their years at St. Paul’s.

In 2017, we installed a wood floor in our full-size gymnasium. We thank God for a wonderful facility to have practices, games, and other performances.

Whether it’s academics or sports, our students participate with a unified goal: to give glory to God in everything we do. Whether we win or lose, we always thank God for the victory he gave through Jesus Christ!