Positively Muskegon: Muskegon Heights Tigers Hit 100% On State Review

You can feel it county wide, this feeling of all of us getting the dust blown off, picking ourselves up and saying enough is enough. We're tired of being counted out and we're better than what you think. It's happening in every corner of the county. You can see it first hand in the new construction Downtown Muskegon. You can see it in Norton Shores where things continue to boom. Even Roosevelt Park has seen over $2 million in growth! You want action? It's in Muskegon!

All of this progress is great but there was recently a goal met by The Muskegon Heights Charter Academy that is just amazing. For so long, Muskegon Heights has struggled with that "one sided story". If something bad happens in the Heights, every news truck and gum shoe reporter is there and they can't wait to tell you how there was another failure. From this authors perspective, when I speak to a career day at any school...I will ask them "When you hear something on the news about Muskegon, what to you hear?" and 100% without fail they say "Someone got shot in the Heights". Imagine the toll that takes on an 8th grader. Imagine more, the toll that takes on an entire community? Why even bother if that's all you ever hear and see? It's changing and it's changing fast and it's being led by a new generation of leaders and people who are just tired of what's been told.

Visit Muskegon Heights Academy Online.

Muskegon Heights truly is a "City of Friendly People" and if you spend any amount of time getting to know folks around town, you'll see it's true. The pride in the heritage of being a Heights Tiger is as strong today as it ever was and the school is truly a center point of the community. The school has struggled, this is true, but what happened recently shows that the corner has been turned and that being a Tiger still carries the pride it should!

Over the last 18 months, the school has been under the watch of the State of Michigan and were required to meet 14 goals in order to satisfy an agreement with the Michigan Department of Education. It was in intensive time of evaluating everything in the district from books to playgrounds, social and academic clubs, facilities and more. The scrutiny was heavy but when the report came back, it was 100% across the board on all 14 of the goals! A new day has dawned in the Muskegon Heights School District and the foundation has been laid to build on! It was so incredible to be there to hear the story first hand.

I met with school Superintendent Rane Garcia and Principal Eddies Jones to talk about the work that went in to this monumental success, take a listen.

It's so great to see the success. It's also great to see that what makes school so important and so memorable is being put back in for the Tigers. Rane and Eddies are remarkable leaders and it was so good to stop in for a visit. We all need to celebrate the victories of our area! Big and small, the accomplishments of all of us make up our story. A story that's getting better every day.