South Dakota school safety

Twenty-three South Dakota schools turned in 2021-22 records we grade as doubtful — a D or an E, meaning schools of the same size teaching the same grades normally report several incidents, or ten or more, and these reported almost none. That works out to 3.2% of the state's 723 schools. The same grade lands on 11.3% of schools nationally. The gap is real, and it is a gap in paperwork: South Dakota schools filled out the federal Civil Rights Data Collection more completely than the country did as a whole. It does not mean children here are safer. We compare each school to roughly 1,500 schools nationwide closest to it in enrollment that teach the same grade levels, and we never adjust for state. Differences between states in this data are differences in reporting behavior.

What you can look up here is a school's record, not a verdict on its hallways. Of the 723 schools in the state, 239 carry a published safety score. Those are the A and B schools — the ones whose reports we believe well enough to score. Every other school shows no score, and that is the method working rather than something missing. A C means a school reported almost nothing but is small enough that a true zero is ordinary; it is not evidence of safety, but it is not implausible either. A D or an E means the reported figure sits far below what schools of that size normally turn in. In all three cases we would rather show you nothing than a number we cannot stand behind.

The six ranked districts

South Dakota has 152 school districts. Six have enough scoreable schools for us to rank them, so the great majority of the state's districts appear here with no district-level standing at all. That threshold is about how many of a district's schools carry published scores — not about how those schools performed.

Oglala Lakota County 65-1 ranks safer than 44% of ranked US districts, with 5 of the 6 schools in its scored set complete enough to score. Todd County School District 66-1 ranks safer than 34%, with 7 of 13. Then Harrisburg School District 41-2 at 10%, with 7 of 10; Sioux Falls School District 49-5 at 7%, with 36 of 43; and Watertown School District 14-4 at 3%, with 6 of 8. Those low placements describe how each district's scored schools compare with ranked districts across the country. Read them as a starting point for questions, not as an answer.

Safest ranked cities in South Dakota

Percentile is against all ranked U.S. cities (higher = safer). Only cities with ≥5 trustworthy-data schools are ranked. Home value is Zillow's ZHVI.

Safest ranked districts

Every South Dakota city with schools

Every South Dakota school district