The northwestern South Dakota farming community of McIntosh is celebrating a new preK-8 school, opening August 2025.

McIntosh has a population of around 125 residents, and their preK-12 student body hovers around 150, nearly all of which are bussed from surrounding communities like Morristown, Bullhead, McLaughlin and even from the southwestern region of North Dakota.

It’s a sparse area on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation that has reinvigorated itself with the support of Dakota Resources and the promise of an improved school district.

“The families and the kids are just ecstatic,” says McIntosh Public Schools business manager Kathy Chase. “In small communities like this, activities center around the school. Everybody comes to games and concerts. This is not just for the kids, it’s for everybody who lives around here.”

Construction began in 2023 after Chase and her colleagues realized the elementary and junior high buildings, established over 60 years ago, were facing plumbing and structural problems in need of crucial repairs.

Connecting the dots like all rural communities do, Dakota Resources’ lending director Terri LaBrie said they were introduced to the McIntosh folks by infrastructure financier Toby Morris, whom they had worked with in 2019 for a school in Lake Andes.

McIntosh made for another good fit, LaBrie said, and Dakota Resources provided for them a $5 million loan allocated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Community Facilities Program, a federal effort to improve smalltown public services.

With another $2.5 million in federal aid as well as some savings from Impact Aid, McIntosh was able to complete the addition of classrooms for preK-8, totaling $8.2 million.

“Working with the McIntosh school leadership was a seamless process,” LaBrie said. “The new addition will provide a wonderful, enhanced learning environment for the students.”

Chase says many passersby comment excitedly on the new building, which sits right off Highway 12. Now that the loan has officially closed, teachers have already given students a tour of what to look forward to. The Title I and Title IX school will now have a Special Education department, new administration offices and extra storage. The staff is proud, too.

“We’re just a farming and ranching community,” says Chase, who has worked with the school for 12 years. “We’re trying hard to keep alive what we can so families and children will want to go to school here! It just makes you feel good inside that we’re able to do something for the community.”