Original Research by School Decision on Lakeland Star School--strong Talented Adventurous Remarkable
Lakeland STAR School serves grades six through eight in Minocqua, Wisconsin, as a charter school within the Minocqua J1 School District. Its full name spells out the acronym STAR: Strong, Talented, Adventurous, Remarkable. The school is very small, enrolling about that size for a middle school. Its student body is predominantly white, with smaller shares of American Indian or Alaska Native students and students identifying as two or more races. The location is a rural Northwoods lake community known as "The Island City," a tourism-driven town whose population swells in summer and whose economy is centered on outdoor recreation rather than industry. The downtown core is compact and walkable, but the town itself spreads across a large area of forests and lakes with a high proportion of seasonal housing.
State test results are suppressed for all tested grades and subjects at Lakeland STAR. Wisconsin withholds assessment data when the number of students tested is very small, which is the case here. This means there is no publicly reported proficiency rate in math, English language arts, science, or social studies for the school's seventh or eighth graders. A parent looking for a measure of academic performance against state standards will not find one for this school. The absence of data is a direct result of the school's tiny enrollment rather than a reflection of any program quality, but it does remove a common tool for comparing schools.
Because Lakeland STAR serves only middle school grades, there is no graduation rate. The comparison to other districts in Oneida County is also not applicable because the school's own proficiency data is missing, so no positioning relative to nearby districts is available. The school's charter status means it operates with some autonomy from the district while remaining a public school.
The Minocqua J1 School District recently introduced a 3K program for children of a certain age range, running three full days per week. That is an expansion of early childhood options for families in the area. Beyond that, the district brief identified no other major recent changes affecting parents. Other aspects of school environment and student support, such as discipline rates, course access, staffing levels, and attendance, were not available in the data provided.
For a family considering Lakeland STAR, the essential fact is the lack of state testing data. That is not unusual for a school this size, but it means you cannot use the typical statewide benchmarks to gauge academic performance. The school is a charter middle school in a small, seasonal tourism community. The student peer group is very small and racially homogeneous. Housing values in the area are above the national median, and the local economy depends heavily on seasonal tourism. A family that values a very small school environment and is comfortable with the absence of standardized test results as a reference point would find this a straightforward match. A family that wants to compare academic outcomes against other schools will need to look into the school's own internal assessments or talk directly with the staff, because the state-level data is not available.
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