Original Research by School Decision on Project Search - Avera Mckennan 07
Project Search at Avera McKennan is a single-grade, single-purpose school serving only twelfth-grade students, housed at the Avera McKennan hospital campus on South Cliff Avenue in Sioux Falls. It operates under the East Dakota Educational Cooperative rather than a conventional school district, which is consistent with its role as a specialized transition program. The name and host setting indicate this is a hospital-based employment and life-skills program for young adults with disabilities, a model used nationally where students spend a school year at a host employer gaining real workplace experience.
The data for this school is thin in ways that reflect its nature. Enrollment is reported as zero for grade twelve, and every racial and ethnic category is reported as zero. Free and reduced-price lunch data, individualized education program data, and English learner data are all missing. State assessment results are empty, and no multi-year academic trends are available. No graduation rate is provided. For a program of this type, these gaps are not surprising. Students placed here are typically counted at their home high schools for enrollment, testing, and accountability purposes, and a transition program does not generate the standard state testing or report-card data that a comprehensive high school produces. A parent reading the empty fields should understand them as a function of the school's design rather than an indicator of quality.
No course access, staffing, attendance, or discipline data was available, so there is little to characterize the program's internal operations from the provided data. A parent interested in this placement would want to contact the East Dakota Educational Cooperative or Avera McKennan directly for specifics on how the program is structured, what workplace rotations are available, and how students are referred.
Sioux Falls is South Dakota's most populous city, publicly reported as a fast-growing community whose economy has shifted toward health care, finance, and retail trade while retaining manufacturing and food processing. Avera Health is one of the city's largest employers, which means students at this program are placed within a major regional healthcare system. The city sits at the junction of Interstates 29 and 90 and has grown rapidly, with the metropolitan area accounting for a large share of the state's population. Downtown Sioux Falls has active street life, a paved loop trail system, Falls Park, and the Washington Pavilion cultural center, though the broader city is largely car-dependent with bus service operating Monday through Saturday.
For housing, the zip code where the program is located shows home values below both the state and national benchmarks, with modest year-over-year appreciation. Rents have risen more noticeably year over year. A family relocating to the area for this program would find housing relatively affordable compared with national figures, though rental costs have been climbing. The current mortgage rate environment sits in the mid-six range, and the national unemployment rate has held steady.
There is no comparison fact-set positioning this school against neighbors, no district brief describing recent changes, and no program offerings list. What the data supports is a narrow but clear picture: a hospital-based transition program in a growing city with a strong healthcare sector, designed for a specific student population whose academic records are maintained elsewhere. Anything beyond that, a parent would need to ask the cooperative or the host hospital directly.
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