The top reported proficiency rate is 44% in English language arts. The lowest is 38% in Math.
Original Research by School Decision on Lemmer Elementary School
Lemmer Elementary School sits in Escanaba, the county seat of Delta County, on the shore of Little Bay de Noc in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. It is a regular public school serving first and second graders, part of Escanaba Area Public Schools. The enrollment is modest for its grade band, with roughly equal numbers across the two grades.
Because the school teaches only first and second grade, there are no state assessment results tied to its own classrooms. Michigan begins M-STEP testing in third grade. The proficiency figures that appear in the data are third-grade results, and those students likely attend a different building in the district by testing time. So the scores should not be read as a direct measure of Lemmer's instruction. They are included in the comparison set, but a parent would want to understand which school actually produced them before drawing conclusions. Lemmer's own academic outcomes are not available in this data, and that gap reflects the untested grade range rather than any judgment about the school's quality.
What the demographic picture does show is a school where a substantial majority of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, a common marker of economic need in Upper Peninsula communities. The student body is predominantly white, with small numbers of children from other racial and ethnic backgrounds. Information on special education and English learner populations was not available, so those pieces of the picture are missing here.
Escanaba itself is a port city with a working waterfront and a traditional downtown along Ludington Street, listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The city has long centered on the paper mill on its outskirts, now owned by Billerud, which remains the area's largest employer. Other manufacturers include Engineered Machined Products and Andex. Civic life clusters downtown, with the City Hall and library complex, the Delta County Courthouse, the William Bonifas Fine Arts Center, and the Escanaba Farmer's Market all within the core. The Little Bay de Noc waterfront, the Escanaba River, and nearby Hiawatha National Forest give families outdoor access close to home. Delta County Airport offers daily flights to Detroit and Minneapolis. Commutes are short, and the city reads as compact and walkable in its center, with some denser residential capacity in the Harbor Tower building.
The housing market in the school's zip code is affordable relative to both state and national benchmarks. Typical home values sit well below the Michigan median and far below the national figure, and the price-to-income ratio is low. That points to a market where buying a home is more attainable than in much of the state. Recent value growth has been strong, suggesting rising local demand, though rents were not available in this data. Families considering the area should weigh the affordable housing against the economic context of a community still tied to a single large industrial employer.
Against other districts in Delta County, the proficiency index tied to this school's data falls in the top quartile, meaning the third-grade results associated with Lemmer sit above most county peers. Again, since those tests come from a grade this school does not teach, the comparison is more a signal about the district's early-elementary pipeline than about Lemmer alone. Chronic absenteeism and graduation rates do not apply here, the former because the figure was not available and the latter because the school has no high school grades.
No program offerings, staffing details, discipline data, or attendance figures were provided, so those aspects of school life cannot be described. The district brief did not surface any parent-relevant changes with lasting impact in recent years. What a family can take from this is a small early-grades school in a working port town with affordable housing, a compact civic core, and a student population reflecting the economic realities of the central Upper Peninsula. For the specifics of how Lemmer teaches reading and math in first and second grade, a parent would need to ask the school directly.
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