2025 Referendum

The story of the 2020-2025 referendum and a look at the needs for beyond 2025

Quality Education

• Community partnerships and ensuring the proper use of taxpayer dollars are very important, but the White Lake School Districts number one goal is a quality education for the students of our area.

• Over the course of this past referendum, our school report cards have regularly been in the top in our area. This past school year all of our schools that qualify for the report card and the district as a whole exceeded expectations. The amount of academic growth the district has made over the past few years has driven this level of success.

• One of our major efforts has been to individualize instruction for our students. We are a small school and the benefit of this is that no student is just a number. We work with kids who could not find success in other area schools and we find ways to help them succeed.

• For the past two school years, every one of our graduating seniors has earned credit towards graduation by either holding a job or taking college level classes.  Many have had a focus on the trades by taking classes at NorthCentral Technical college.  A number of our students have earned credit towards graduation by working at the Mill as well.

• In White Lake we realize the importance of the trades and as part of our commitment to individualized instruction, we help find opportunities based on student interest and need and we will look for ways to develop Youth Apprenticeship partnerships that will benefit students and our business/industry partners.

• Students in our technology education program have worked on welding and we have seen an increase in the number of students joining the NorthCentral Technical College welding program. This past year this program built wooden cutting boards and practiced running a business by selling these boards.

• Interested students have participated in field trips to the heavy machinery engineers in Coloma, a tour of the veterinary medicine program at NTC, the cooking program at NTC, and much more. 

• Students involved in our classes also participated in a cooking competition and a group of four students qualified for the state level competition. 

• The White Lake School District is part of a work training program that sends qualified students to work at Goodwill. As part of that program our students are trained on job skills and participate in cooking classes at NTC as well. 

• The White Lake School District has started working with the White Lake Market to help some of our students develop job skills.

• While the district reduced two positions and increased the number of students attending, we have found ways to make the education of our students better. We eliminated the multiage concept at the primary level and the upper elementary level.

• We added a 6th grade teacher tp ensure students are receiving instruction at grade-appropriate levels with same-age peers.

• The White Lake School District continues to use interventions for small groups and individual students to ensure that every student is receiving the levels of support needed to access and be successful in our curriculum.