School districts in Montana

Montana splits the two grade bands between separate districts over a large part of the state: 84% of its homes sit under an elementary district that stops before high school, with a separate secondary district taking over from there. That is why 286 of its 368 ZIP Code areas return a different set of districts for grade school than for high school. In 59901 (Kalispell), the most divided of them, Kalispell Elementary leads the elementary answer and Flathead High leads the high school one. The two districts that share the most ZIP Codes here are Hardin Elementary and Hardin High, in 10 of them. Counted by homes rather than by ZIP Code area, 95% of the state's housing sits in a ZIP Code that more than one district serves.

How many school districts are in Montana?

395: the Census boundary file draws 395 school districts in Montana that reach at least one ZIP Code area with homes, 65 unified, 233 elementary and 97 secondary. A ZIP Code here can sit in more than one of them, which is why a school district lookup by ZIP Code for Montana lists them all: find your school district by ZIP code.

Two districts at one address

Montana keeps 97 separate secondary districts — districts that pick students up partway through and run to the end of high school, over several elementary districts at once. Where one of those sits, an address has two district names and neither is wrong.

ZIP Code areas with a district368
Served by more than one district313 (85%)
Grade school and high school differ286 (78%)
No high school district named1
Unified districts65
Elementary districts233
Secondary districts97
Homes in no district at all0

District pages for Montana, largest first

Ranked by the homes inside their boundaries: Billings High leads at 59,155, then Bozeman High at 34,633 and Helena High at 27,267. Only districts with a page here are listed; 391 more in the state have none.

The most divided ZIP Code area in Montana

ZIP Code area 59901 is the most divided in Montana: 19 districts reach into its 24,589 homes, led for the early grades by Kalispell Elementary and Evergreen Elementary. No single name describes this postal code, and no lookup that gives one is telling the whole truth about it.

Grade schoolKalispell Elementary School District57%13,945 of 24,589 homes

High schoolFlathead High School District98%23,986 of 24,589 homes

Each percentage here is a share of the 24,589 homes counted in ZIP Code 59901, not the chance that any one address is in that district. Enrollment follows the street: two houses on opposite sides of the same road can be in different districts, and only the district office can say which.

Every track below is 35 cells long and stands for all 24,589 homes counted in ZIP Code 59901, so one cell is 703 homes, rounded to the nearest whole cell. Cells lit solid are the homes one district holds, and the unlit cells are the homes held by the other districts in the same list.

Kalispell Elementary School District13,945 of 24,589 homes57%
Evergreen Elementary School District2,571 of 24,589 homes10%
West Valley Elementary School District2,055 of 24,589 homes8.4%
Cayuse Prairie Elementary School District1,161 of 24,589 homes4.7%
Somers Elementary School District1,104 of 24,589 homes4.5%
Smith Valley Elementary School District851 of 24,589 homes3.5%
Helena Flats Elementary School District848 of 24,589 homes3.4%
Creston Elementary School District551 of 24,589 homes2.2%
Fair-Mont-Egan Elementary School District507 of 24,589 homes2.1%
Whitefish Elementary School District213 of 24,589 homes0.9%
Columbia Falls Elementary School District171 of 24,589 homes0.7%
Bigfork Elementary School District157 of 24,589 homes0.6%
Kila Elementary School District155 of 24,589 homes0.6%
Marion Elementary School District150 of 24,589 homes0.6%
Olney-Bissell Elementary School District150 of 24,589 homes0.6%

2 further districts reach into this ZIP Code area and hold no homes in them.

For grade school, an answer of one district name would be wrong for 10,644 of the 24,589 here.

How much of Montana a single district name misses

Across the 368 ZIP Code areas in Montana with homes in them, an answer of one district name misses 59,813 of the 515,144 homes they hold — 12% of the state. In 109 of those areas the largest district for the early grades holds every home counted; in the other 259 it leaves some out. That is a different count from the 313 areas served by more than one district: it also counts districts under half a percent of the homes and homes in no district, and it does not count a high school district that differs.

ZIP Code 59901 · Kalispell, Montana names 19 districts. Kalispell Elementary is the largest of them for grade school, and an answer of its name alone misses 10,644 of the 24,589 homes there; for grade school the rest is 10,644 homes with Evergreen Elementary, West Valley Elementary, Cayuse Prairie Elementary and 11 more districts.

ZIP Code 59101 · Lockwood, Montana names 7 districts. Billings Elementary is the largest of them for grade school, and an answer of its name alone misses 6,102 of the 18,725 homes there; for grade school the rest is 6,054 homes with Lockwood K-12, Elysian Elementary, Blue Creek Elementary and 2 more districts; 48 homes in districts too small to name here.

ZIP Code 59718 · Four Corners, Montana names 8 districts. Bozeman Elementary is the largest of them for grade school, and an answer of its name alone misses 4,299 of the 19,136 homes there; for grade school the rest is 4,296 homes with Monforton Elementary, Belgrade Elementary, Anderson Elementary and 2 more districts; 3 homes in a district too small to name here.

Where a ZIP Code here names more than one district

Of the 368 ZIP Code areas in Montana that the federal file names a district for, 313 name more than one school district. These are the 12 with the most, starting at 19 districts in one postal area: Kalispell, Brockton and Stillwater County. Each row opens the full answer for that ZIP Code, with every district named for grade school and for high school and the share of the homes each one holds.

What to do next

Ask the district office to confirm your street address: look on its site for a school locator, a find my school tool or an attendance zone map, or call the office.

A ZIP Code is a set of mail delivery routes, not a boundary: 313 of the 368 ZIP Code areas in Montana with a district named for them are served by more than one school district, and the line between two of them runs along streets. Only the district can say which side of that line an address is on.

District websites and phone numbers here come from the NCES Common Core of Data directory, 2024-25 school year, filed under the same district ID as the Census boundary files. Where it lists no usable website, none is printed rather than guessed.

If a house purchase depends on the answer, ask the district itself for written confirmation of that exact address. A listing is not a district record, and neither is this page.

Where these numbers come from

The homes were counted in the 2020 Census and the district lines are the 2026 boundary file, so a fast-growing area may have changed since; ZIP Codes here are the Census Bureau's ZIP Code Tabulation Areas; a share is a share of homes, not the chance that one address is in a district; and a district is not a school attendance zone. Every source, file and caveat is on the method page.