Original Research by School Decision on Clara B. Ford Academy (sda)
Clara B. Ford Academy (SDA) is a single-school district in Wayne County, Michigan, serving grades 5 through 12. It operates as a charter academy authorized by Ferris State University, which reauthorized the school effective July 1, 2022, with a contract running through June 30, 2027. That reauthorization gives families some assurance of continued operation for several years ahead.
The enrollment is very small, with students concentrated in the high school grades. A few students occupy the middle grades, while the upper grades carry the largest share. The racial and ethnic mix is roughly balanced between Black and White students, with small numbers of students identifying as American Indian or Alaska Native, Hispanic, or two or more races. No free-or-reduced-price lunch data, special education counts, or English learner figures were available in the data we received, so a parent would want to ask the school directly about the support services and socioeconomic makeup of the student body.
State assessment results for the most recent year were suppressed across every tested subject and grade the school reported: seventh-grade math, eighth-grade math, seventh-grade ELA, eighth-grade ELA, eighth-grade science, and eighth-grade social studies. The tested count in each case was zero, which reflects how few students sit in those grade bands. Suppression under these conditions is a privacy protection that comes with very small enrollments rather than a signal of weak performance. A parent may want to ask the school how it tracks academic growth for its students and what internal measures it uses, since state testing data does not provide a usable picture here. No graduation rate was available either, and no multi-year trend data was reported. We looked for program offerings such as AP, dual credit, or career pathways but found none listed, so we left that out rather than guess.
Among Wayne County's districts, the school's chronic absenteeism rate sits below the midpoint, meaning it is on the higher side for the county. This is a data point a parent would want to understand in context: a school this small can see its absenteeism figure swing sharply with just a few students missing school regularly, so asking the school what attendance supports are in place would be worthwhile. On the spending side, the per-pupil current expenditure sits in the upper range among Wayne County's districts, well above the county midpoint. For a school this small, that elevated figure can reflect the fixed costs of running a full academic program with a small student body.
The data we received did not include a locale brief or community and economic context for the school's location, so we cannot describe the surrounding housing market, neighborhood character, or commute patterns. The school's street address and city were also absent. A parent considering Clara B. Ford Academy would want to visit the school, ask about its academic approach and what a typical day looks like, and understand how it serves students across such a wide grade range with such a small staff and student body. The publicly reported reauthorization through Ferris State University is a useful stability marker, and the county-level spending data suggests resources are being directed toward students, but the absence of proficiency and graduation outcomes means the academic picture has to be assembled through direct conversation with the school rather than from state report cards.
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