ESCANABA, Mich. (WZMQ) – On Wednesday, Escanaba Area Public Schools will welcome students back to the classroom for another academic year.
“It feels really good to have students coming back to the classroom,” District Superintendent Dr. Coby Fletcher said on the final day of students’ summer vacation. “It gets kind of lonely in schools when there aren’t students and staff around, so it’s nice to have them back.”
Over the summer, the district completed two major projects. One was a $2 million overhaul of the Upper Elementary’s cooling system.
“We went from a server that served individual classrooms to a chiller system that serves the whole building,” Fletcher explained. “It can still be regulated by classrooms, because we converted the entire system over to digital controls. We couldn’t start until kids left for the summer and we had to be ready for them to come back in the fall, so we were on tight timelines, but we made it.”
The second project was a complete renovation of the serving area in the Jr/Sr High School cafeteria.
“(It) was original to, I want to say, the 1964 build of the high school, so it opened up the area significantly,” Fletcher said. “We’ve got new equipment in there, and it’s going to make it much easier for students to come through and grab breakfast and lunch every day.”
New this semester, the district is adding academic support classes, along with additional resources for students in the ISD’s special education program.
“Our goal is always to integrate those students as much as possible into the regular classroom,” said Fletcher. “We’ve created some elective classes that sort of help bridge that gap and prepare kids to go into the regular classroom.”
The district is also launching an AP capstone diploma program.
“Students have to take at least six AP exams and pass them with a score of three or higher to receive the diploma,” Fletcher said.
According to Fletcher, students who complete the program will be eligible for up to $10,000 in scholarships.
“To encourage students to do it, we offer scholarships as well for students who try and pass maybe three of their AP exams with a three or higher, just because making the attempt is going to be valuable,” he said. “That will be a good opportunity to help them go on to complete their college and university education.”
That is one of the primary goals of Escanaba Area Public Schools’ new offerings. Fletcher says that goal is strengthened by the fact that the district is one of only a few in Michigan to have surpassed its pre-COVID levels of achievement.
“The high school was just ranked by U.S. News and World Report in about the top, I want to say, 13% of high schools throughout the state,” he said. “Approximately 65% of our senior class goes on to some form of secondary education, and of those, 60% complete their post-secondary education, which is a really amazing statistic if you look at how things typically fall in America for post-secondary education, so we’re very proud of that. A lot of good things are happening, and we just continue to add programs that we think are going to be valuable for our students and community.”
Escanaba Area Public Schools are fully staffed for the new school year.
