The top reported proficiency rate is 13% in Math. The lowest is 10% in Science.
Original Research by School Decision on Moon Elementary School
Moon Elementary School sits on Hoyt Street in Muskegon, serving pre-kindergarten through fifth grade as a regular public school within Muskegon Public Schools of the City of. The school's location places it in a city that functions as the county seat and hub of Muskegon County, a place with a manufacturing and port-history identity along Lake Michigan's eastern shore. Downtown Muskegon, a short distance away, carries the region's civic and cultural weight with a convention center, arena, performing arts center, art museum, and a farmer's market that draws heavy summer traffic. The Muskegon Lakeshore Bike Trail, Pere Marquette Beach, and two state parks give the area outdoor amenities that few Michigan cities of this size can match.
The state assessment picture for Moon Elementary is sobering. Across the 2022-23 M-STEP results, proficiency rates in math were very low at every tested grade, with third grade the highest and fourth and fifth grades in the bottom reporting range. English language arts showed a similar pattern, with fourth grade the relative bright spot and third and fifth grades well below it. Fifth-grade science and social studies results were also low. Taken together, the school's overall proficiency index places it in the bottom quartile relative to districts in Muskegon County, and the county's own range runs wide, so this is a clear soft spot rather than a near-miss. A parent may want to look into this further with the school, asking what supports and interventions are in place and how the building plans to move these results.
Enrollment and demographic data were reported as zero across every grade and category, which likely reflects a data collection gap rather than an empty building, since the school's operational status is listed as open. Free-or-reduced-price lunch rates, special education counts, English learner figures, and racial and ethnic breakdowns were all missing. Without these, it is hard to characterize the peer environment or the level of student need the building is addressing. This is a gap a family would want filled before drawing conclusions about fit.
Housing in the school's zip code is affordable by both state and national standards. Typical home values sit well below the Michigan benchmark and roughly half the national one, and rents are correspondingly modest. The price-to-income ratio suggests that buying a home in this area is within reach for a working household relative to national norms, though current mortgage rates near six and a half percent shape what that affordability looks like in monthly terms. This is a housing market that favors renters and first-time buyers more than most.
At the district level, Muskegon Public Schools recently secured state career-tech funding to expand four programs under its Innovation Academies umbrella, covering business, engineering and advanced manufacturing, criminal justice and first response, and digital media and design. Voters also passed a 2026 bond for building improvements with the tax debt rate held steady. These are secondary-level investments that will not directly shape a Moon Elementary student's day, but they signal a district putting resources into facilities and applied learning pathways that an elementary family would eventually feed into.
What Moon Elementary offers a family is an affordable entry point into a district with active civic infrastructure and a city with genuine natural and cultural assets. What it does not yet show, in the available data, is strong academic results or a full demographic picture. A parent weighing this school should ask the building directly about its improvement plans, its student population, and how it supports children performing below proficiency.
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