Original Research by School Decision on Bert Goens Learning Center
Bert Goens Learning Center is a special education school operated by Van Buren ISD, located on Paw Paw Street in the small village of Lawrence, in Van Buren County. It serves students from pre-kindergarten through twelfth grade, and its enrollment is small even for a specialized program. The school is not a charter or magnet school. Because it is a special education school, the educational program here is designed to meet needs that a typical general education setting may not fully address, and the student body reflects that purpose.
State assessment results for this school are suppressed across every subject and grade for which data was available, including math, English language arts, science, and social studies. In each case, the tested count of students was zero. This pattern is consistent with the nature of a special education school, where students may participate in alternate assessments rather than the standard M-STEP, or where the number of tested students in a given grade is too small to report. A parent reading this should not interpret the missing proficiency results as a sign of weak performance. They reflect the school's specialized population and the way the state reports, or does not report, results for that population. No graduation rate, chronic absenteeism rate, or other outcome metric was available for this school either. The county-level comparison set, which positions districts relative to one another in Van Buren County, could not place this school on proficiency, graduation, or attendance measures for the same reason.
The student population is predominantly white, with a Hispanic enrollment that represents the next largest group. A substantial share of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, which is consistent with the economic profile of the surrounding area. Information on individualized education program participation and English learner status was not reported in the data provided, though given the school's designation as a special education school, IEP participation would presumably be near-universal. The school does not appear to publish program offerings, course access details, staffing figures, discipline data, or attendance data in the sources available, so those areas cannot be characterized here.
Lawrence itself is a small, primarily residential village in central Van Buren County, situated between Kalamazoo and Lake Michigan. It has a traditional small-town layout centered on Paw Paw Street, where the village hall, township hall, and the Van Buren County District Library Lawrence Branch all sit within a few blocks of one another. The community is described as close-knit and rural, with civic life oriented around family events like Music in the Park, a Farmers Market, an annual Labor Day Weekend Ox Roast Homecoming Festival, and Christmas in the Park. Publicly reported sources note that the village has a high diversity index for the region. The village is auto-dependent, with no public transit system identified. Housing is largely owner-occupied, and the typical home value in the school's zip code sits below the Michigan state benchmark and well below the national benchmark, which may make the area relatively accessible for families looking to settle near the school. The community has been experiencing slow growth, with publicly reported projections suggesting that growth may flatten or slightly decline in coming years. There are no major new housing subdivisions or commercial expansions on the horizon, though the village is participating in a homeowner rehabilitation program and has an active fundraising campaign for a new inclusive playground.
For a family considering Bert Goens Learning Center, the most relevant question is whether the school's special education programming matches a child's specific needs, and the available data does not speak to the details of that programming. The academic and outcome measures that would normally help a parent compare schools are absent here because the school's specialized mission puts it outside the standard reporting framework. A parent would want to contact the school or Van Buren ISD directly to ask about instructional approaches, support services, transition planning for older students, and how the school measures progress for the students it serves. The surrounding community is quiet, affordable relative to state and national housing benchmarks, and anchored by familiar small-town institutions, which may appeal to families looking for a settled rural base while their child receives specialized services.
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