Gros Cap School

Gros Cap School is a small, rural public school in Saint Ignace, MI, serving 87 students in grades PK-8 under the highly-rated Moran Township School District.

Gros Cap has undergone a remarkable turnaround over the past decade, climbing from the bottom quartile of Michigan schools to the top 25% statewide. In the 2025-2026 school year, it ranked in the 78th percentile (329th out of 1,492 schools) and earned a 4-star rating—a significant jump from the 55th percentile the year before. This places it well ahead of the nearby St Ignace ElementaryMiddle School, which ranked in the 57th percentile. What makes this achievement especially notable is that nearly half of Gros Cap's students (48.28%) qualify for free or reduced lunch, yet the school ranked in the 94th percentile statewide for serving low-income students in 2023-2024, earning a 5-star rating. This suggests the school is highly effective at closing achievement gaps. In recent testing, Gros Cap's 6th graders significantly outperformed state averages in both English Language Arts (46.67% vs. 37.5%) and Math (53.33% vs. 31.9%).

Gros Cap offers an intimate learning environment with a student-teacher ratio of just 11.5:1, allowing for highly individualized attention. The school also invests heavily in its students, spending $22,487 per pupil—32% more than the $17,060 spent at St Ignace ElementaryMiddle School. Chronic absenteeism at Gros Cap is 14.9%, notably lower than the 23.1% rate at St Ignace and nearly half the state average of 27.9%. For parents in the area, Gros Cap presents a compelling option compared to the larger St Ignace school, achieving higher rankings and better attendance despite serving a similar demographic. One note of caution: with such a small student body, year-to-year test scores for individual grades can fluctuate significantly based on a single cohort's performance, so it's wise to focus on the school's clear upward trend in state rankings rather than any single year's results.