TEN SLEEP – Monday evening in the Ten Sleep School cafeteria, before the monthly Ten Sleep School board meeting, the Ten Sleep School seniors were given a celebration for their outstanding results, with a score of 22.1 on last year's ACT testing. The state average was 19.5.

Ten Sleep School Superintendent Jimmy Phelps congratulated the now seniors for their hard work and also their teachers before cutting the cake and handing out the slices.

According to the information provided by the state and a lot of leg work from new Ten Sleep School Principal Levi Collins, Washakie County School District No. 2 had the best state ACT composite score of any district in the state.

Since the Ten Sleep School district is so small their scores, along with other small school districts were not published, so to learn where Ten Sleep School district placed Collins had to call all the other small schools to learn their scores.

"Traditionally in the past, regardless of numbers [of students] they released everyone's scores. For some reason, this year was the first year that they decided that 10 was the magic number and any school that had 10 students or less [Ten Sleep had 8] would not be posted for the district. So was it posted for the entire state? No it was not, which is why we had to call people [other small schools] up and ask them what their scores were. It actually did take some calling to get those scores but the state basically decided that our sample size just wasn't large enough to report," Collins explained to the board. "It was actually really funny, there was another school district who scored really well and we were trying to get some of their information from them or they were trying to get some information from us because they thought they were No. 1 and they called Mr. Phelps [Jimmy] who had to burst their bubble, that no we were actually higher than they were," Collins added.

Ten Sleep's scores, as a high school had them tied with Sheridan High School for third in the state but as a district, their score of 22.1 was the highest. Since small schools scores were not published, it is unknown which district was second.

The district also placed first in science with a score almost two points higher than any other reported district in the state at 23.6 and the state average was 19.8. They earned third in the state for math with a score of 21.5 and the state average was 19.3, fourth for English with a score of 21.1 and the state average was 18.4 and third for reading with a score of 22.1 and the state average was 19.9.

Collins congratulated the students after explaining each score to the board and credited not only the student's hard work but their teachers' hard work as well.