Low enrollment and an ongoing budget deficit have prompted Freeman Academy in South Dakota to close at the end of this school year.

The 123-year-old Mennonite-affiliated school, which operated a junior college until 1986, had 53 students enrolled this year in grades 1-12.

In a Jan. 31 meeting at Salem Mennonite (South) Church, members of the Freeman Junior College/Freeman Academy Corporation voted 64% to end operations in all grades. The motion required a simple majority.

The Freeman Academy Board of Directors presented two options to corporation members Jan. 12 after a task force spent five months examining the school’s viability. One was to close the entire academy at the end of the current school year. The other was to eliminate grades 7-12, with the understanding that the future is uncertain.

A year of grief and healing will follow the close of this school year. After that, the board and constituents will consider options and revisioning for campus facilities.

“If there’s anything I’ve learned over 40 years of doing my best to follow Jesus, it’s that we sometimes do not understand what is at work through the Holy Spirit,” board chair Brian Paff said at the meeting. “And while today marks a significant loss, closure is not the same as the end. I pray that the God who makes all things new will stir up new beginnings beyond our wildest imaginations, and that we will never tire of keeping watch for God’s invitation for us to join in this holy work.”

Founded as South Dakota Mennonite College with 109 students enrolled in the first classes in 1903, the institution changed its name in 1939 to Freeman Junior College, with high school classes added later.

The town of Freeman and the surrounding area is home to a variety of Anabaptist groups — Swiss and Low German former General Conference Mennonites (now Mennonite Church USA), Hutterites and Mennonite Brethren — that worked together to support the school, which may be best known for hosting the annual Schmeckfest meal and musical since 1959 to raise funds for the academy, with attendance sometimes topping 5,000.

Paff said Schmeckfest’s future remains somewhat unclear, but the event has its own volunteer leadership separate from the academy.

“My sense is that if the community wants to continue hosting Schmeckfest, they will seek new ways to ensure it happens,” he said.

Smaller families and changing times depleted the need for college associate degrees. The corporation closed the junior college in 1986, at which point junior high classes were added, joined in 1992 by grades 5-6, grades 1-4 in 2012 and the Little Blessings daycare program and kindergarten in 2019. The daycare and kindergarten ended in 2024.

The Mitchell Daily Republic reported Freeman Academy had 76 students enrolled across grades 1-12 in 2020. The school began classes last fall with 53 students. The high school counted 32 students in 2024-25.

A 2018 description of the school for parents said the 82% Mennonite student body ranged from 70 to 80 students, with most students living in a 40-mile radius and home-schooled students able to participate in athletic and arts programs. A residence hall on campus can house 16 students. The fall 2025 newsletter reported the 15 students living on campus this year come from California, Florida, Idaho, Minnesota, Albania, China, Cyprus, the Democratic Republic of Congo and France.

The public Freeman School District had 435 students enrolled in 2024-25 across a high school, junior high and elementary school, along with two other elementary schools at Tschetter and Wolf Creek Hutterite colonies, based on a district population of 2,506 people, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.