Five public elementary schools in Deschutes County received overall grades of C or C+ in Niche’s latest county evaluations, the lowest overall marks among the county’s listed schools.
The 2027 evaluations point to academic concerns, but supporting records reveal distinct school experiences: bilingual instruction with application requirements, partnerships between neighboring campuses and attendance patterns that deserve attention alongside test results.
Schools appear from C+ to C, alphabetically within each tied group. Their order does not break those ties.
Bear Creek Elementary School, Bend — Overall Niche Grade: C+
Bear Creek Elementary serves kindergarten through fifth grade in Bend–La Pine Schools. Its current Niche profile lists 521 students and a 17-to-1 student-teacher ratio.
That ratio compares enrollment with full-time-equivalent teachers; it does not mean every classroom has 17 students.
Academic Results Leave Room for Improvement
Niche assigns Bear Creek a C+ for academics and a B− for teachers. The profile reports that 33% of students reached proficiency in reading and 25% in mathematics on Oregon’s 2024–25 state assessments.
Those figures identify a substantial academic challenge. They describe performance against a standard in that assessment year, rather than how much individual students learned over time.
Bear Creek’s official school welcome also confirms that it hosts a strand of the district’s Spanish dual-immersion program. The schoolwide proficiency figures do not separately establish results for that program.
Bilingual Learning and Changes Around Campus
The district’s dual-immersion information describes instruction through both English and Spanish, beginning in kindergarten. Entry involves a spring lottery, with waiting lists when applications exceed available spaces.
That makes program admission a separate consideration from living near the school. Families entering later must have prior Spanish experience and complete the district’s placement process.
The school’s surroundings are also part of a documented transportation project. The City of Bend’s Bear Creek and 27th Street improvement plans describe a shared-use connection to the school’s pickup and drop-off area, along with trail signage and striping.
The city identifies that connection as interim work coordinated with school-site improvements planned for 2027. Those plans concern everyday access to campus, rather than evidence of a change in academic performance.
Hugh Hartman Elementary School, Redmond — Overall Niche Grade: C+
Hugh Hartman Elementary is a kindergarten-through-fifth-grade school in Redmond School District 2J. Its Niche profile lists 376 students and a 16-to-1 student-teacher ratio.
The school’s defining feature is its English-Spanish instructional model, which families should understand before applying.
Two Languages, With Academic Standards Still in View
Niche gives Hugh Hartman C+ grades for both academics and teachers. Its profile reports 2024–25 proficiency figures of 34% in reading and 27% in mathematics.
Those results warrant attention even as families consider the opportunity to develop skills in two languages. The overall grade does not establish whether the bilingual program caused the reported outcomes.
According to the district’s dual-language program guide, elementary students receive half their instruction in Spanish and half in English. The program follows state academic standards while adding language-development goals.
The district also says participating students with individualized education programs, Section 504 plans or talented-and-gifted plans receive the services and accommodations specified in those plans.
Enrollment Requires a Deliberate Commitment
Families apply to the dual-language program through kindergarten registration. When demand exceeds capacity, placement involves a lottery; later entry depends on available space and Spanish proficiency.
That differs from simply registering at an assigned neighborhood school. The district also asks families to make a long-term commitment to the program.
R. E. Jewell Elementary School, Bend — Overall Niche Grade: C+
R. E. Jewell Elementary serves kindergarten through fifth grade in Bend–La Pine Schools, at its Murphy Road campus. Its Niche profile lists 421 students and an 18-to-1 student-teacher ratio.
Jewell shares the same overall C+ as Bear Creek and Hugh Hartman, despite differences within its evaluation.
Attendance Adds Context to the Academic Grade
Niche gives Jewell a C+ for academics and a B for teachers. Its profile reports reading proficiency of 36% and math proficiency of 25% for 2024–25.
The Oregon Department of Education’s school dashboard provides another useful measure: 74.6% of students were regular attenders in 2024–25, meaning they attended more than 90% of their enrolled school days.
That is a measure of participation, not academic mastery. It helps distinguish two questions families may otherwise combine: whether students are consistently present and whether their learning meets the assessed standard.
The same state record reports an average teacher-retention rate of 89% over the preceding three years. That documents staffing continuity without establishing its effect on test results.
A Language Pathway Within a Neighborhood School
Jewell’s official school description confirms that it offers Spanish dual immersion alongside its broader elementary-school program.
The district’s published model starts with a larger share of instruction in Spanish in the early grades, reaching an equal English-Spanish split in fourth and fifth grades. It is designed as a continuing pathway beyond elementary school.
Families should distinguish enrollment at Jewell from admission to that particular program. The district uses an application and lottery process for incoming kindergarten immersion students, with additional requirements for later entry.
Jewell’s schoolwide results combine the campus’s students; they should not be treated as a separate evaluation of its immersion classrooms. Understanding the actual classroom pathway is essential to interpreting what the school offers.
La Pine Elementary School, La Pine — Overall Niche Grade: C
La Pine Elementary serves kindergarten through fifth grade in Bend–La Pine Schools. Its current Niche profile lists 483 students and a 17-to-1 student-teacher ratio.
The school ties Rosland for the lowest overall letter in the county listing.
Proficiency and Attendance Both Need Attention
Niche assigns La Pine Elementary a C for academics and a B− for teachers. Its profile reports 2024–25 proficiency figures of 28% in reading and 24% in mathematics.
The state’s school dashboard also reports that 51.5% of students were regular attenders that year. In other words, only a little more than half attended more than 90% of their enrolled days.
These are separate findings. The attendance figure does not, by itself, explain the proficiency results, but both are consequential when assessing students’ access to instruction and academic support.
For families, that makes the school’s response to missed days as relevant as the reading or math intervention offered once a child is in class.
Connections Across Nearby Campuses
Principal Megan Silvey’s school welcome describes a deliberate effort to connect the elementary school with nearby middle- and high-school campuses.
The school reports arranging shared events, activities across schools and mentorship opportunities. That is particularly relevant in a community where families may have children attending several neighboring campuses.
Silvey also describes partnerships with local organizations and service providers intended to connect families with academic, social-emotional and other support.
Those descriptions establish the school’s approach and available relationships, rather than verified improvements in achievement.
The useful follow-through is specific: how a student receives help, who coordinates it and how the school tracks whether that support is meeting the child’s needs.
Rosland Elementary School, La Pine — Overall Niche Grade: C
Rosland Elementary is another Bend–La Pine kindergarten-through-fifth-grade school in La Pine. Its Niche profile lists 155 students and an 11-to-1 student-teacher ratio.
Its overall C ties La Pine Elementary. Different proficiency figures do not make one school lower-graded than the other.
Low Proficiency Alongside Attendance Concerns
Niche assigns Rosland a C for academics and a C+ for teachers. Its profile reports 2024–25 reading proficiency of 13% and mathematics proficiency of 18%.
The Oregon school dashboard corroborates those rounded assessment figures and reports regular attendance of 53.7% for the same year.
The results identify substantial needs in foundational learning and consistent attendance. They do not establish that students made no progress: proficiency and growth answer different questions.
Rosland’s small enrollment and relatively low student-teacher ratio also should not be read as a guarantee of small classes or sufficient intervention for every learner. The staffing ratio is a schoolwide calculation.
An Award for Adaptive Play
A documented development beyond the test results comes from SELCO’s 2025 Creative Educator Grants.
The grant provider named Rosland educator Marnie Freilinger’s adaptive-play-equipment project among its recipients, describing a proposal connecting play with learning and wellness goals in a school setting.
That award identifies a specific effort to expand students’ learning experiences. The announcement does not establish how extensively the equipment has been implemented or whether it changed academic outcomes.
For families considering Rosland, the grant is one concrete initiative to explore alongside the more pressing questions raised by reading, mathematics and attendance records. Its purpose and its eventual results should be evaluated separately.
Different Enrollment Paths Across the Same County
The five featured schools sit below a county-listed field whose highest overall grades are A−. But their shared position does not mean they offer interchangeable experiences.
Three host English-Spanish programs, with application rules that differ from ordinary neighborhood assignment.
Families considering those pathways need to examine admission requirements and the sequence of instruction, not assume every classroom at every host school follows the same model.
Niche’s 2027 elementary-school methodology combines academics, teacher measures, the district’s overall grade, culture and diversity, and parent or student feedback. These overall letters therefore reflect several factors, rather than state test proficiency alone.
The reporting also distinguishes proficiency from progress. A proficiency percentage describes how many tested students met a defined standard; establishing growth requires a separate measure of learning over time.
That distinction matters here: the published assessment figures document academic concerns, but they cannot establish each child’s trajectory or the effectiveness of a particular classroom program.
