The top reported proficiency rate is 53% in Math. The lowest is 15% in Science.
Original Research by School Decision on Ferry School
Ferry School sits on Pennoyer Avenue in Grand Haven, one of the older elementary buildings in a Lake Michigan resort town that doubles as the Ottawa County seat. It serves pre-kindergarten through fourth grade as part of Grand Haven Area Public Schools. Publicly reported sources note that Ferry Elementary is one of the city's original schools and continues to operate woven into the community fabric rather than on a distant campus. The surrounding city blends a walkable downtown along Washington Avenue, a waterfront boardwalk running to the pier and two historic lighthouses, Grand Haven State Park along a half-mile of shoreline, and a working Great Lakes port that imports limestone, slag, cement, and coal while exporting sand. Manufacturing here includes auto parts, furniture, metal products, and industrial equipment. The U.S. Coast Guard maintains a Sector Field Office in town, and Grand Haven was the first city Congress officially designated as Coast Guard City USA. Tourism drives much of the seasonal economy, with the annual Coast Guard Festival bringing large crowds. The population has stayed relatively stable over the past two decades.
The school itself is small for its grade band. A substantial share of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. The student body is predominantly white, with smaller Hispanic, Asian, two-or-more-races, Black, and Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander representation. Data on individualized education programs and English learners was not available, so those population shares remain unnamed here.
On state testing, Ferry's most recent M-STEP results come from the current school year. In third-grade math, a narrow majority of tested students reached proficiency. Fourth-grade math landed right at the midpoint, with half proficient. English language arts was softer in both grades, with fewer than half of third graders and fewer than half of fourth graders proficient. Average scale scores were reported alongside these rates. Participation rates were missing from the state data, so it is not possible to characterize how complete the tested pool was. An older fourth-grade science result from several years back showed low proficiency, and a fifth-grade social studies result was suppressed because no students were tested at that level. Because Ferry stops at fourth grade, the school does not produce its own graduation rate, chronic absenteeism figure, or advanced coursework data. Those gaps reflect the grade band, not missing quality.
Compared with other districts in Ottawa County, Ferry's overall proficiency across tested subjects and grades sits below the county midpoint. This is a fact worth a parent's attention. The county cohort includes a range of districts, and Ferry's combined proficiency index lands in the lower portion of that spread. A parent weighing this school may want to ask the administration how current instruction and intervention are responding to these results, particularly in early literacy.
The housing market around Ferry School runs above both state and national benchmarks for typical home values, with rents sitting well below the estimated monthly mortgage cost. That gap between renting and owning is wide. Home values have appreciated at a faster year-over-year pace than the state average, while rents have moved only modestly. The area carries a price-to-income ratio above the national figure, meaning ownership demands a meaningful share of local earnings. For families renting, the market is more accessible than for those buying.
Grand Haven Area Public Schools did not surface parent-relevant district changes that cleared a lasting-impact bar in the available research, so there is nothing to report on that front. The city adopted a Master Plan, but its contents were not available. Ferry's identity is tied to its setting: a small early-grades school in a compact, civically active lakeside town where the waterfront, the port, and seasonal tourism shape daily life. For a family drawn to that environment and willing to engage with the school on its literacy results, it is a setting with clear character and concrete room for academic growth.
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