What does summertime look like for a school district? For teachers and administrators, June, July, and August can actually be just as busy as the academic year. So says Casey Petz, superintendent for Suttons Bay Public Schools (SBPS). Between summer camps, curriculum planning, school year preparation, and campus projects, Petz stresses that any given summer tends to be way more of a whirlwind than most parents, students, or community members realize.

That’s especially true for SBPS this summer, as the school district preps for a massive bond-funded campus renovation project. While the bond work is firmly on the public radar, though, Petz tells the Leelanau Ticker there’s another big undertaking going that hasn’t been as roundly discussed: a “school improvement” effort that could bring a slew of new elective courses to the SBPS curriculum come fall.

“We’re spending a lot of time reflecting on some listening work we recently did with our families,” Petz explains. “When students leave our school – particularly when families have had a full 13 years of experience in our school – we think it's important to get their feedback on why they stayed and what they celebrated. So, this past spring, we did a bunch of interviews with kids and families and key members of our community, and we heard some really consistent themes that just basically distilled down to one basic thing.”

The takeaway?

“We heard the SBPS is, in a lot of ways, the school for real life,” Petz continues. “We teach kids how to be good humans and our families and students essentially said, ‘Good job, but also, do more of that.’”

In particular, Petz kept hearing demand from parents and students for more “home economics” or “life skills” courses.

“They wanted more classes that had clear practical applications in the real world,” Petz explains. “We have a personal finance class, which is part of Michigan Department of Education requirement now. But what we heard was a desire for classes not just about managing finances, but also things like: How do you invest in the stock market? How do you repair a dress or a shirt, if a button comes off? How do you cook a recipe? Can you fix a flat tire? Can you tie a tie? Can you diagnose a problem in the electrical system in your home? Can you grow something and harvest it? Can you cook yourself a meal without burning the house down?”

Petz is committed to heeding the feedback, which is why SBPS leaders and teachers are spending this summer discussing how those skills and others might be built into the district’s middle school and high school curricula.

“We’re putting our heads together to figure out where these types of things might reside within particular classes or disciplines, or what we might be able to add in as an elective choice or a series of classes so that there's intention, there's design, there's sequencing, there's curriculum. So, it's planning work, design work, collaborative work, and then implementation work, and it takes a little time.”

Petz is hopeful that SBPS will be able to start rolling out the first curriculum changes during the 2024-25 academic year.

“What I think families should expect is that, in semester one, they'll see the early signs – as in: Here's what's coming, here's what's available, here's what the district is working on,” he says. “We’re thinking of this upcoming school year being our beta testing year, where we can introduce some things, see what curriculum the kids latch on to, and get some feedback. And then for the full implementation, we’re talking about the fall of 2025, where the classes would be quite a bit more structured and built into our master schedule.”

Petz ties the growing demand for “school of real life” curriculum into a broader shift he’s seen among the SBPS student body. A few years ago, he says, most graduates left the district with plans of matriculating to some college or university. At this year’s graduation ceremony, he flagged a significant uptick in the number of students traveling alternative paths.

“There are certainly kids who are college-bound, but we are seeing more of our students go directly into the workforce, or going into an apprenticeship, or going to a trade school,” Petz says. “Some 70 percent range of our kids who are juniors and seniors are involved in job site training, or Career-Tech Center programming, or dual enrollment, or some combination thereof. I think that ties into some headlines you might read about this current generation of kids being ‘the do-it generation.’ They’re maybe sliding away from what in years past has been called white collar work and back toward more of the blue collar or service industry types of things.”

Petz believes the SBPS curriculum should evolve to give every student something they can use beyond high school – no matter where the winds might take them.

“We want to be providing all our kids opportunities to thrive, and not necessarily pigeonholing kids into a particular track for college-bound education,” Petz concludes. “If that's a kid's path, we’re here for that. But the tagline we use at Suttons Bay is that ‘people can make it here.’ They can make it as captain of their team or the lead in the play, or they can make things with their hands at the Career-Tech Center, or they can make it to college. And these real-life skills that we’re adding to our curriculum, they apply to all those things.”