High Schools in Romulus Community Schools

The Romulus Community Schools district in Michigan operates two high school programs serving students in grades 9-12 (and 6-12 at the virtual center): Romulus Senior High School, the traditional comprehensive high school with 518 students, and Romulus Virtual Learning Center, an alternative online program with 118 students.

For parents, the most important takeaway is that these two schools offer very different experiences and outcomes. Romulus Senior High School is the stronger academic option, with a graduation rate of 85.8% that actually exceeds the state average of 84.0%. While its test scores are well below state averages—only 11.9% proficiency in science and 27.4% in SAT reading/writing—the school shows positive momentum, improving in social studies and reading over the past year. The bigger concern here is chronic absenteeism, affecting nearly half of all students (48.0%), which likely contributes to the low proficiency rates. In contrast, Romulus Virtual Learning Center is struggling significantly, with a graduation rate of just 42.1% and a dropout rate of 14.0%. Despite lower chronic absenteeism (27.7%), virtual students are not completing coursework, and the school's extreme student-to-teacher ratio of 53.6:1 makes meaningful instruction nearly impossible.

Financially, there is a stark disparity: Romulus Senior High School spends $24,380 per student compared to $12,858 at the virtual center, yet the virtual program still costs roughly $1.5 million annually for very poor results. Both schools serve predominantly economically disadvantaged populations (73.75% and 83.05% free/reduced lunch respectively), and proficiency gaps versus the state range from 20-30 percentage points in most subjects. Math proficiency is critically low at the traditional high school, with only 8.4% of 10th graders proficient. The virtual school's poor graduation rate drags the district average down to 71.7%, masking the relative success at Romulus Senior High School, which would otherwise push the district above the state average. Parents should view the virtual center as a credit recovery option rather than a primary school choice, while the traditional high school, despite academic challenges, is successfully moving most students to graduation.