Lake Superior School District (ISD 381)
Lake Superior School District, ISD 381, enrolled about 1,286 students in 2024-2025 across four buildings on two campuses roughly 25 miles apart: Two Harbors and Silver Bay. Each town keeps its own elementary and its own combined 6-12 secondary school. For a buyer looking anywhere along the North Shore, that structure is the district's defining fact, because it means the school question here is which campus an address feeds rather than which grade level a child has reached.
About Lake Superior School District
ISD 381 covers a long, thin slice of Lake County running up Highway 61 from the Duluth edge past Two Harbors to Silver Bay. It reported 86 teacher FTE against 1,286 students, a student-teacher ratio of about 15.0 to 1 (NCES Common Core of Data, accessed 2026-08-14), which is a staffing ratio rather than an average class size.
Geography drives everything about how this district is organized. Consolidating into one set of buildings would put a 25-mile stretch of shoreline highway between a large share of families and their school, in a place where that highway is exposed to lake weather for much of the winter. Keeping four buildings for 1,286 students is an expensive answer to that problem, and it is the answer the district has kept.
Schools in the district
On the Two Harbors campus, Minnehaha Elementary School takes preschool through grade 5 with 367 students, and Two Harbors Secondary School takes grades 6 through 12 with 597.
On the Silver Bay campus, William Kelley Elementary takes preschool through grade 5 with 143 students, and Wm. M. Kelley Secondary School takes grades 6 through 12 with 179.
The naming is worth pausing on, because it has misled people before. The Silver Bay elementary and the Silver Bay secondary school both carry the Kelley name in slightly different forms, which in a data table reads like one school double-counted. It is two separate buildings. An earlier draft of this guide treated the discrepancy as a conflict in the source data and flagged it for a phone call; the federal record resolved it without one.
Enrollment & performance
At 1,286 students the district is small, and the two campuses are very unevenly sized. The Two Harbors side carries 964 of the total across its two buildings; the Silver Bay side carries 322. A family choosing between the two towns is choosing between a secondary school of 597 and one of 179, and that is a real difference in what a school can offer without combining sections or sharing staff across grades. It is also a real difference in how visible a student is, which cuts both ways.
Minnesota publishes no single district grade, and this guide does not manufacture one. The Minnesota Report Card carries the state's own achievement, progress, graduation, and attendance reporting by school and student group.
Source: NCES Common Core of Data, 2024-2025 release (LEA 2740740), accessed 2026-08-14 (2024-2025).
Attendance boundaries
The line that matters runs somewhere between the two towns, and on a shoreline where communities sit strung along a single highway it is not obvious from a map. Knife River, at the Duluth end of the district, and the scattered properties along the shore between the towns are the addresses most worth confirming directly with the district before an offer.
There is a second thing to check that is not strictly a boundary. Much of the housing along this shore is seasonal or second-home property, and a family planning to live somewhere year-round should confirm both the school assignment and the winter road maintenance for the specific address. On this stretch those two questions tend to have the same answer.
Neighborhoods this district serves
Three communities in this guide sit in ISD 381: Two Harbors, Silver Bay, and Knife River. Each neighborhood page states its own assignment and price context. Buyers who want the North Shore without leaving Duluth's district look at the North Shore strip inside the city limits, which is in ISD 709 and much closer to Duluth employment.
The North Shore's working town: ore docks, a lighthouse, and a real grocery store.
Silver BayA whole town built at once in 1954, with the best cliffs on the North Shore behind it.
Knife River212 people, a working harbor, and the smokehouse that has been curing fish here since 1908.
Common questions about Lake Superior School District
Why does ISD 381 have two of everything?
Because it merged two shoreline communities that are 25 miles apart. Two Harbors and Silver Bay each kept an elementary and a 6-12 secondary school rather than consolidating into one set of buildings, which on this stretch of Highway 61 would have meant a very long daily drive for one town or the other. The result is four buildings for 1,286 students.
How different are the two campuses in size?
Substantially. Two Harbors Secondary enrolls 597 and Minnehaha Elementary 367. On the Silver Bay side, Wm. M. Kelley Secondary enrolls 179 and William Kelley Elementary 143. A student at the Silver Bay secondary school is in a building roughly a third the size, which changes the course menu, the activity options, and how much the school can offer without combining sections.
Which campus would my child attend?
It depends on the address, and on this shoreline that is genuinely worth confirming rather than assuming. Communities are strung out along one highway, so the practical question is which way a bus turns onto 61. Ask the district for the specific property.
Are the Two Harbors school names confusing?
They can be. The district's secondary buildings are named for the towns and for a person, and the Silver Bay pair appears in federal data as both William Kelley Elementary and Wm. M. Kelley Secondary, which reads like one school and is two. Earlier drafts of this guide misread that as a data conflict; it is not, it is two buildings sharing a name.
Where these facts come from
- NCES Common Core of Data, district and school directory 2024-2025, Lake Superior Public School District (LEA 2740740) accessed 2026-08-14
- Lake Superior School District ISD 381, district website accessed 2026-08-14
- Minnesota Report Card, Minnesota Department of Education accessed 2026-08-14