Original Research by School Decision on Colfax Township S/d #1f
Colfax Township S/D #1F is a single-school district in Huron County, Michigan, serving kindergarten through eighth grade at Big Burning School. It is one of the smallest districts a parent will encounter, with total enrollment in the low double digits spread across nine grade levels. Some grades have no students at all in a given year. The district sits in the Bad Axe area, a rural part of the Thumb region.
The student body is nearly entirely white, with one student identifying as Black. Free-or-reduced-price lunch data was not reported, so the economic profile of the enrolled families is not visible in the data the state provides. IEP and English-learner counts are also missing. A parent considering this district would want to ask the school directly about how it supports students with special needs and what the community's income profile looks like.
Every state assessment result for the most recent school year is suppressed. Tested counts are zero across math, English language arts, science, and social studies at every grade level where M-STEP or PSAT would normally apply. This is a direct consequence of the district's size. With so few students per grade, there are no test-takers in most tested grades, and privacy suppression removes any results where a handful of students might appear. State testing data, in the conventional sense, is not available for this district. A parent should not read the absence of scores as evidence of weak performance. It reflects the reality of a district this small.
There is no graduation rate, and none is expected. Colfax Township stops at eighth grade, so students transition to another district or school for high school. The data does not specify which receiving district or schools these students typically move on to, and a parent would want to investigate that pathway directly.
Among Huron County's districts, the district's chronic absenteeism rate sits below the midpoint, with the county median lower still and the range running wide across the cohort of thirteen districts. The rate is moderate for the area but not the lowest. Per-pupil current spending places the district in the upper range among Huron County districts, well above the county median. Small districts often spend more per student because fixed costs are spread across fewer children, and the spending level here likely reflects that dynamic rather than unusually broad programming.
Housing in the district's zip code, centered on Bad Axe, is affordable relative to both state and national benchmarks. Typical home values sit well below the Michigan state benchmark and roughly half the national figure. The price-to-income ratio is low, meaning a family earning a typical income would find homeownership here more attainable than in most of the state. Rent data was not available, so the rental picture is a gap a family would need to look into locally.
The district brief turned up no publicly reported coverage of referenda, curriculum changes, property tax proposals, or policy shifts in recent years. This is consistent with a very small rural district where such events are infrequent or go unreported outside local channels. A parent interested in the district's current priorities or any upcoming changes would need to contact the school directly, as the public record provides little.
What this district offers is a very small, intimate educational setting in a rural community where housing is affordable and per-student resources are relatively high. The trade-off is that standard academic benchmarks are not available because the student population is too small to generate reportable results. Families who want close attention from teachers in a quiet rural environment may find that appealing, while those who rely on published test scores to gauge school quality will not find that evidence here. The transition to high school happens outside this district, so planning that next step is part of the decision from the start.
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