February 13, 2025

Dear Parents and Community Members:

We are pleased to present you with the Annual Education Report (AER), which provides key information on the 2023-24 educational progress for Mackinac Island Public School District. The AER addresses the complex reporting information required by federal and some requirements of state laws. Our staff is available to help you understand this information. Please contact Superintendent, Kelly Lipovsky for help if you need assistance.

The AER is available for you to review electronically by visiting the following Mackinac Island Public School’s website or you may review a copy in the main office at your child’s school.

For the 2023-2024 school year, schools were identified based on previous years’ performance using definitions and labels as required in the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA).  A Targeted Support and Improvement (TSI) school is one that had at least one underperforming student subgroup in 2022-23. An Additional Targeted Support (ATS) school is one that had a student subgroup performing at the same level as the lowest 5% of all schools in the state in 2021-22. A Comprehensive Support and Improvement (CSI) school is one whose performance was in the lowest 5% of all schools in the state or had a graduation rate at or below 67% in 2021-22. Some schools are not identified with any of these labels. In these cases, no label is given. Our schools have not been given one of these labels. 

Some of the key challenges for Mackinac Island include declining enrollment, support staff open positions, and housing options for both employees and families. As we compare NWEA, SAT, and formative classroom assessments, student achievement has remained consistent in the last 2 years. The staff at Mackinac Island continue to collect and analyze student data in order to make informed educational decisions for all students. This data will also drive our professional development needs as outlined in our school improvement plan. Based on the scores, reading and math continue to be areas of focus with reading at the upper elementary being a key challenge. . Data did show improvements on local assessments for both of those core content areas, and math showed a slightly higher improvement than reading across the grade levels. Growth targets were met, but proficiency targets remain an area of focus. One key initiative we are taking to address these challenge areas is our district-wide curriculum work and adoption of ELA curriculum resources. We are working on identifying priority standards within the Common Core State Standards and reviewing new curriculum materials that will help with delivering viable instruction with fidelity. Additionally, we continue to hone our Multi-Tiered System of Support to tailor interventions to students who are at-risk in these core content areas. We are confident that by focusing on first good instruction, we will accelerate student achievement and close persistent gaps.

State law requires that we also report additional information (outlined below), which you will find following this cover letter. 

1. PROCESS FOR ASSIGNING PUPILS TO THE SCHOOL 

2. THE STATUS OF THE 3-5 YEAR SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT PLAN 

3. A BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF EACH SCHOOL 

4. IDENTIFY HOW TO ACCESS A COPY OF THE CORE CURRICULUM, A DESCRIPTION OF ITS IMPLEMENTATION, AND AN EXPLANATION OF THE VARIANCES FROM THE STATE’S MODEL 

5. THE AGGREGATE STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT RESULTS FOR ANY LOCAL COMPETENCY TESTS OR NATIONALLY NORMED ACHIEVEMENT TESTS 

6. IDENTIFY THE NUMBER AND PERCENT OF STUDENTS REPRESENTED BY PARENTS AT PARENT-TEACHER CONFERENCES 

7.PROGRAM OFFERINGS 

Mackinac Island Public School provides a unique educational experience for our Prek-12th grade students! Our class sizes are small and instruction is provided by highly qualified and caring staff who are able to meet the needs of individual learners. Our students learn more about grit and flexibility than most districts can provide. Feel free to contact me at the phone number above or klipovsky-mis@eupschools.org for more information.

Sincerely,

Kelly M Lipovsky 

Principal/Superintendent

1. Mackinac Island Public Schools have only one school in the district that runs programs for Preschool-12th grade. When families move to Mackinac Island, they typically will contact the school. The office administration will talk to families about the school and give them a tour. Parents or legal guardians will complete enrollment and registration documents, including a request for records. Students in elementary will be placed with the teacher who teaches that grade and high school students will be given a schedule based on a credit audit and interest.  Mackinac Island also accepts school of choice students in grades K-12th.

2. School Improvement at Mackinac Island Public School is an ongoing process.  Belonging that all students can thrive, the school improvement document is designed to increase students' academic success and help them become life-long learners.  The overall focus in our school improvement plan is High Quality Instruction while the strategies and activities are in various levels of implementation as we continue to refine our work.  In the development of our plans, the staff at Mackinac Island have investigated best practices as indicated by Marzano’s research of High Reliability Schools.  We recognize the impact that highly effective strategies and instruction anc have on student success.  As we address the Common Core Standards, we look for the best possible methods of teaching for mastery.  Professional learning is attended by staff  in an effort to stay current with effective practices.  Teachers also receive job-embedded coaching based on building initiatives and professional goals.  The core academic areas are the focus of our school improvement plan along with providing an environment where students feel safe and welcomed.

Measuring student progress and evaluating program effectiveness is an ongoing process.  Data is collected through HRS surveys, NWEA benchmark assessments, and classroom observations.  When appropriate data is desegregated in an effort to determine our greatest area of need and ensure alignment to our goals.  Teachers regularly use formative assessments with their students in order to inform their instruction and provide the necessary interventions to students in a timely manner.

A hard copy of the school improvement plan is available in the main school office.  School improvement work is a team effort, made  of stakeholders that include teachers, board members, parents, and administration.  The team is open to any interested individual.  Each year the team engages in development, review and evaluation of goals, objectives, and strategies for the school improvement plan.

3. Mackinac Island Public School is the only school on the island.  We serve students in K-12th grade and also provide all day, everyday Preschool for 3 and 4 year olds.  We have approximately 75 students in our building which allow us to meet individual needs and keep class sizes low. The district has eleven certified teachers that are experienced and have been in education for an average of 20 years.  Despite being small we are able to offer our students electives in Art and Music, PE and STEM, Robotics, Cinema Appreciation and Yearbook.  Students have work based learning opportunities as well as access to CTE programs.  Our afterschool programming includes MHSAA sports as well as clubs for younger students to participate in cheerleading, basketball, and enrichment opportunities.  Students at our school have personalized learning opportunities and a safe learning environment where positive student-teacher relationships are a priority.

4. Our work with the curriculum is becoming more of a focus in the district.  While the work is important, it can be a challenge with a small staff and teachers sometimes teachers multi-grade classrooms.  This is why the work of identifying our Priority Standards is essential to ensuring students are given access to the necessary state content.  During the 24-25 school year, elementary teachers have worked to identify Priority standards in Language Arts and will continue the work with Math in the following school year.

Because the documents are continuously revised and updated, a set is housed on the district shared drive, and can be made available upon request in the main office. We strive to be consistent with the models identified by the Michigan Department of Education, and deviate only when time limits from multi-grade classrooms and data suggests that particular areas need more focus to meet the needs unique to students in our isolated area. Implementation of the core curriculum with fidelity is a focus area for Mackinac Island Public School. Teacher collaboration is key. PLC teams meet quarterly (at least) to discuss curriculum, review student data, and plan for student success. The building principal conducts regular walk-through observations to ensure fidelity of implementation as well.

5. Student achievement test results can be found here: https://www.mischooldata.org/annual-education-report-1/#TeacherQuality Some results are limited due to our student numbers.  Typically there needs to be a minimum number of students for the achievement of a sub-group to be shared in order to keep the privacy of individual students within the grade levels.

6.. In our high school there are 20 AP courses offered to students through Michigan Virtual. This year, 5% of students take an AP course. 10% of our students have participated in Early Middle College.  We have started to offer more local work based learning and 10% of our students have participated in those opportunities.  Our goal is to continue to increase these opportunities for students with many fields of interest. 

7. Parent-Teacher Conferences have a fairly high rate of attendance, at about 80-85%. The school offers scheduled parent teacher conferences in the Fall and Winter in addition to parent requests throughout the year. Due to our unique circumstances and parent transportation, communication with families is occurring on a regular basis as families drop off and pick up their children