EXCLUSIVE REPORT: A small-town school success story

Each week in Community Conversations, the Center’s staff asks engaged citizens to tell us what’s working well in local communities. We seek examples of people, places, and programs that could be replicated elsewhere to help in Michigan’s struggle to return to prosperity.

Today we offer the first of what will be regular reports on success stories from across the state…

Alternative school serves up sweet success

By Judy Putnam

At a small alternative public school in southwest Michigan, the results of student success are indeed sweet – and sticky.

A student-run maple syrup business is the trademark of Volinia Outcomes School, a school for seventh-grade through 12th-grade students in Cass County’s Marcellus Community Schools.

Students tap 600 maple trees in adjacent Fred Russ Forest owned by the Michigan State University, carry the sap in 5-gallon buckets, boil it, bottle it and market it as Volinia Maple. An annual March Maplefest pancake breakfast draws nearly 1,000.

The operation is mainly run by 11 students in Donald Price’s business class, but the entire 95-member student body and 13 staff support the project, particularly when the sap begins to run and the maples are tapped.

“It’s quite the sight when we get them all out there,” said Price, a longtime teacher at the school who took over as principal this year.

Students are allowed to stay behind and study, but most choose to participate in the maple-tapping work, a job that requires heavy buckets to be carried a quarter mile and dumped into a tank, Price said.

“It is an opportunity to get out of classroom. The teachers are involved. They carry the buckets as well,” he said.

The final results not only inspire pride in a quality product, but student-staff bonding, which Price said is the key to student achievement.

“I think what it boils down to, especially for these students, is that our staff really cares,” he said. “If we can build relationships and a rapport (with the students), they’ll bend over backwards for you.”

“If that means doing homework when they’ve never done homework before, they’ll do it,” he added.

The school opened in 1991 in a vacant elementary school building that had been used as a Head Start facility. It is under the umbrella of Marcellus Community Schools, but it draws students from Cass, Van Buren and St. Joseph counties.

A dozen middle school students attend a self-contained class at the school; the rest are high school students.

The students who come to Volinia are at high risk for dropping out. Some have been expelled from their home schools. Others are delinquents who have been placed by courts.

The maple business got its start in 2001 under Sandy Wiseman, a now-retired counselor and business teacher who was searching for ways to make the academic world relevant. Wiseman still volunteers with the project.

Jim Sandy, executive director of the Michigan Business Leaders for Educational Excellence, said such projects help students gain science, math, English skills as they study the tree’s biology, figure the gallons of sap needed per pint of syrup, and write business and marketing plans.

“That’s been a concern for a long, long time because kids always ask, ‘Why do I need to learn this stuff?’ As an educator you’ve got to answer that,’’ Sandy said. His group, which is affiliated with the Michigan Chamber of Commerce Foundation, advocates for more rigor in school to improve workplace skills.

At Volinia, Price said students are generally two years behind academically by the time they enroll. But, he said, many students are close to their peers by the time they leave. The 19 Volinia students who took the ACT college entrance exam last spring had a composite score of 17, compared with the statewide composite score of 19 and a composite score of 18.6 for the 55 students at Marcellus High School.

He said the name – Volinia Outcomes School – is somewhat dated. Volinia is the name of the township, and “Outcomes” referred to the original academic model, where students learned at their own pace and received incompletes instead of failing.That’s changed with more rigor required of schools under the federal No Child Left Behind Act and the new state core curriculum, Price said.

Danielle Kuemin, 18, of Niles, graduated from Volinia last year with a 4.0 GPA. She’s a freshman at Western Michigan University, studying English and planning to teach.

Kuemin said she spent her four high school years at Volinia after she made a bad choice and got in trouble with the law. She worked on the syrup project in business class and volunteered the other years.

She said it gave her real-life skills she will take to the work place, but she gained more than that.

“The staff in itself is one of a kind. They get to know you, and I think that’s awesome,” she said.

While Kuemin said she has a supportive family, the staff relationships helped her.

“Being at Volinia filled another gap. It really made me believe in myself.”