Original Research by School Decision on Algoma Venture Academy
Algoma Venture Academy is a public charter school serving grades seven through twelve in Algoma, Wisconsin. It is a regular school with a charter designation, meaning it operates within the Algoma School District but offers a distinct educational approach. The school is small, with enrollment figures that place it among the smallest secondary options in the area.
The Academy sits in Algoma, a compact lakefront city on Lake Michigan about an hour’s drive east of Green Bay. Algoma has a fishing heritage and a tourist-oriented downtown with art galleries, a winery, a brewery, and seasonal festivals. The city’s population has been stable in recent decades, and its economy relies on tourism, small businesses, and local government. The school is integrated into the community rather than set apart, given the city’s size. Parents reading the district’s public information will see that Algoma Venture Academy was a newer addition to the district’s offerings, established to provide a project-based learning pathway for middle and high school students.
The student body is very small and predominantly white, with a small Hispanic minority and a tiny share of students identifying as two or more races. Roughly half of the students come from families with low enough incomes to qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, a notable proportion. No data was available on the share of students with disabilities or English learners, and the school did not report those counts in the available records.
State testing results for math, English language arts, science, and social studies are suppressed for all grade levels that would normally be tested (grades seven and eight). Suppression occurs when the number of test takers is very small, as it is here, to protect student privacy. This means there is no publicly available measure of the school’s academic proficiency from the state’s Forward assessments. A parent considering the school would need to ask the school directly about how its students are performing academically, since the state’s typical accountability data cannot be reported. The school also does not have a published graduation rate in the available records; it serves grades through twelve, but the graduation data field was absent rather than reported as zero.
No information was provided on discipline rates, chronic absenteeism, staffing ratios, course offerings, extracurriculars, or postsecondary readiness programs. The comparison data that would place the school against other districts in Kewaunee County was not applicable because the school’s own proficiency and graduation metrics were missing.
For families who value a small, alternative learning environment in a compact lakeside community, Algoma Venture Academy offers a self-described project-based charter within the Algoma district. The suppression of state test scores and the absence of standard outcome metrics make it difficult to gauge academic performance from public data alone. A direct conversation with the school would likely be essential for any parent trying to understand what this pathway looks like in practice.
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