Original Research by School Decision on Excelsior Township S/d #1
Excelsior Township S/D #1 is a single-school district in Kalkaska County, Michigan, serving kindergarten through eighth grade at Crawford School. The district brief describes it as a one-room schoolhouse with a very small student body, and the enrollment figures bear that out. Children are spread thin across the grade levels, with some grades having only a handful of students and others just one or two. The entire student population identifies as white. Free-or-reduced-price lunch data was not reported, and information on special-education and English-learner populations is missing, so the economic and special-population picture is incomplete.
State assessment results for the most recent school year were suppressed across every tested subject and grade. Math, English language arts, science, and social studies proficiency rates are all listed as suppressed, with tested counts at zero. Given the extremely small enrollment, this is consistent with privacy rules that prevent reporting results when so few students sit for an exam. A reader should not read suppression as a sign of weak performance. It reflects the small scale of the school. That said, because no usable proficiency data is available, there is no way to characterize how students are performing academically against state benchmarks or neighboring districts. A parent would need to ask the school directly about classroom-level evidence of student learning.
Because the district ends at eighth grade, there is no graduation rate to report. That metric applies to high schools, and this district does not serve those grades.
The comparison set is limited: among Kalkaska County's two districts, Excelsior Township sits in the top quartile for chronic absenteeism, meaning its rate is the lower of the two, which is the favorable direction for that measure. Per-pupil current spending sits in the lower range relative to the other district in the county. With only two districts in the comparison, these position labels should be read as a narrow snapshot rather than a broad peer analysis.
The housing context centers on Kalkaska and its surrounding zip code. Home values in the area are well below both the state and national benchmarks, and the local market has seen a modest year-over-year decline. The affordability picture, based on a price-to-income ratio, suggests that housing costs are relatively manageable against national income figures, though local incomes may differ. Mortgage rates hover in the mid-six percent range nationally, which shapes what families can stretch toward. Rent data for the immediate area was not available.
The district brief found no evidence of recent referendums, curriculum overhauls, property tax shifts, or other parent-relevant changes. Available sources provide baseline demographic and fiscal data but nothing about recent strategic initiatives or programmatic shifts. Program offerings were not reported, so there is no information on extracurriculars, specialized instruction, or enrichment opportunities. Staffing data was not provided either, so class sizes and teacher support cannot be assessed here.
What the picture does convey is a very small, rural, single-school community where children learn in a compact setting with few peers per grade. For families drawn to that intimacy, the school may be worth direct conversation. For those who want measured academic results, specialized programs, or a broader peer group, the lack of reported outcomes and program data means those questions will have to go to the school itself rather than to any public dashboard.
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