Olson Rd
Kettle River, MN 55757

The teachers and staff at this school are top-notch. The community support is fantastic and our children love this school. They had a very poor experience at another school in Kindergarten. We've been at Barnum for 2 years and they love it. They actually feel like their teachers care, and children can spot a phony 100 miles away. The office staff, lunch staff, janitorial staff are all fantastic. I really can't say enough about Barnum Elementary. Wonderful place!

Barnum is very lacking in many ways. If you’re reading this from out of town thinking about going here. Don’t. Barnum is a very white washed town, while this doesn’t effect education for the most part it doesn’t prepare you for the real world. This doesn’t fall on the school obviously it’s just a not so no points against it there. The problems I remember in school was the outdated thinking a lot of the teachers have and the things they’ll say. I remember one of my friends being asked if he stole his shoes when he got new shoes. That was said by the principle at the time I went there. I also remember a teacher saying some specific medications were useless and you should just get over it. Barnum is very behind in caring about mental health and really health in general. I will give Barnum credit for having some good teachers. Their English teachers are top notch! The schools been in budget troubles and it really shows. It impacts the students a lot I feel. With any small towns there will always be special treatment to some students. Im sure these students had the time of their lives but I personally didn’t. Since there are some teachers that were there when students parents were there there will be clear discrimination against “the problem kids” which just leads to more problems from them. If you look into the numbers Barnum is behind in many categories. Bullying is a problem in Barnum, Especially for LGBTQ+ students and students of other races. This either gets unnoticed or ignored by all staff. I’ve seen it firsthand. A lot of thing actually go unnoticed when you were in the right family. I knew many students who used chewing tobacco and Vapes but would get completely ignored until it happened to someone who didn’t play sports. Fights that would happen would always be these problem students I talk about fault. If you’re not from here originally then it’s gonna be a rough time here. Attendance was and still probably isn’t good for this reason. When I came into the high school they really pushed you to go for a four year school. And I believe that’s for two reasons. Barnum has never been good at college readiness, and it could be out of touch staff. Parents of students here did not go to college, especially four year colleges. While the school may be slightly improving from when I was there it’s still far below other schools in the area. My closing statement will be Barnum needs to get better with a lot of issues