Original Research by School Decision on Aces Academy
ACES Academy sits on South Third Avenue in Alpena, the county seat and only city in Alpena County, on the shore of Lake Huron's Thunder Bay. It is an alternative school serving grades seven through twelve, part of Alpena Public Schools, a district that publicly reported sources describe as geographically the largest in Michigan. The school is small, with an enrollment concentrated in the high school grades and only a handful of students in seventh and eighth. Nearly all students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, and the student body is almost entirely white. Data on special education and English learner populations was not reported, so those shares are unknown here.
Because ACES is an alternative school, its academic profile looks different from a traditional secondary school, and the available data reflects that. State assessment results for the most recent year were suppressed across math, English language arts, science, and social studies. In each tested subject, zero students were reported as tested in the grade-level rows available. This kind of suppression is common in alternative and special-population settings where small tested counts and enrollment patterns mean results are not reported. A parent reading this should not treat the missing results as a sign of poor performance; they mean the state did not produce reportable proficiency figures for this school. We looked for a graduation rate and chronic absenteeism rate and found neither reported. No multi-year academic trend data was available either.
The neighbor comparison set is labeled relative to districts in Alpena County, a small cohort. All three comparison metrics, overall proficiency, four-year graduation rate, and chronic absenteeism, were marked inapplicable because the entity's values are missing. So there is no way to position ACES against the other district in the county on those standard measures from this data.
No program offerings, course access details, staffing figures, discipline data, attendance data, or civil-rights information were provided. Title I status was also not reported. This leaves a real gap for a parent trying to understand what the day-to-day academic pathway looks like inside the building. A parent may want to ask the school directly about its instructional model, counseling and support services, credit recovery options, and how it serves students reading below grade level or needing extra structure.
Alpena itself is a small industrial and residential city with a heritage rooted in nineteenth-century logging. Major employers include MyMichigan Health, the Lafarge-Holcim cement plant, Besser Company, and a Decorative Panels International drywall facility. Alpena Community College, a two-year institution, is also in town. The city has a walkable downtown along the Thunder Bay River with civic and cultural anchors like the Art Deco courthouse, the Great Lakes Maritime Heritage Center, theatres, and a cinema that opened in a former JCPenney space. The broader city is auto-oriented, with no public transit system identified. The Alpena Mall, once the only enclosed mall in northeastern Lower Michigan, largely closed in 2022, and retail has shifted to corridors along M-32 and US-23. The population has been stable but slightly declining over the long term. No major new housing developments surfaced in available searches.
Housing in the ACES attendance area is modestly priced relative to the state and well below national benchmarks. The typical home value sits below the Michigan statewide figure, and the price-to-income ratio is low compared with the national level, which points to a relatively affordable housing market for the region, though mortgage rates remain elevated.
Alpena Public Schools is described in publicly reported sources as the first county-wide school district in the state, with one traditional high school, a junior high, this alternative school, and six elementary schools spread across a large geographic footprint. We looked for district-level parent-relevant changes, such as bonds, curriculum shifts, or property tax changes, and found little meeting a lasting-impact threshold, so there is nothing to report there.
What the data does tell a parent is that ACES Academy is a small, alternative secondary program in an affordable, industrial Lake Huron town, serving a high-poverty student population in a district with a broad geographic reach. What it does not tell you, because the figures are suppressed or absent, is how students perform on state tests, whether they graduate on time, what programs and supports exist inside the building, and how attendance and discipline play out. Those are the questions worth taking directly to the school.
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