[5] In 2003 the district entered into a cooperative agreement with the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe that would allow the two parties to jointly operate a single K-12 school system.
[4] In 2016 the Fort Yates/Standing Rock school system joined the Turnaround Arts program, which was offered by the Executive Branch of the United States.
When the COVID-19 pandemic in North Dakota forced the district to end in-person classes, laptops were donated to students so they could do distance learning.
[4] The current 77,000-square-foot (7,200 m2) Standing Rock Middle School, built for $11,600,000 and partly financed by a grant from the United States Department of Education worth $4,600,000, was dedicated in 2005.
Therefore, that year several of the sports teams of Fort Yates Public and Standing Rock Community had merged, although some remained separate.