Lake Superior Academy

Lake Superior Academy is a very small, K-5 public school in the rural outskirts of Sault Sainte Marie, MI, serving just 93 students as its own single-school district. It’s a tight-knit environment where class sizes are small, but the school faces unique challenges and opportunities that are important for parents to understand.

One of the most striking things about Lake Superior Academy is how its size shapes everything. With so few students, test scores can swing dramatically from year to year based on one grade’s performance. For example, in the most recent testing year, the 4th grade cohort showed real strength, with 46.67% proficiency in ELA—beating the state average (41.3%) and outperforming nearby Joseph K Lumsden Bahweting Anishnabe Academy (34.8%). However, the 5th grade results were more mixed, with science proficiency at 36.36%, below the state average and lower than both Sault Area Elementary School (54.4%) and Bahweting (42.4%). This volatility means that a single strong or weak class can define the school’s reputation in any given year, so it’s worth looking at trends over time rather than a single snapshot.

Financially, Lake Superior Academy operates with significantly less per-student funding ($10,576) compared to its neighbors—Bahweting spends $23,713 and Sault Area spends $16,047—and it has a higher student-to-teacher ratio (20.6 vs. 12.4 and 13.2). Despite these constraints, the school manages to achieve comparable results in some areas, which suggests internal efficiency. However, the most pressing concern is chronic absenteeism: 27.9% of students were chronically absent in 2024-2025, a rate that, while improving from a peak of 56.5% a few years ago, remains well above the state average. On a positive note, the percentage of students eligible for free/reduced lunch has dropped from 56.47% to 41.94% over the past few years, indicating a shift in the community’s economic profile. For parents, this is a school where personalized attention is possible, but where attendance and resource limitations are key factors to watch.