Mackinac Island Public School

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Mackinac Island Public School is the public school district serving Mackinac Island, Michigan. The school district is coterminous with the city and with the island. It is governed by a school board of 5 elected members. One school building, on Lake Shore Drive, is sufficient to serve the entire island, which usually has between 80 and 100 pupils in grades kindergarten through 12th. The school building was built in 1962 and enlarged in 2001 to include a regulation-size gymnasium. The school's basketball, soccer, and volleyball athletic teams, the Lakers, play in Michigan's Northern Lights League with other rural, island-based and small-enrollment schools in far northern Michigan.

Mackinac Island's Lakers have a traditional rivalry with the teams fielded by Lake Michigan's Beaver Island. The two islands have had an antagonistic relationship since the 1850s ^[1]. With 28 pupils enrolled in ninth through twelfth grade eligible for varsity athletic competition in the 2006-2007 school year, Mackinac Island Public School is the second smallest public school, and eighth smallest overall, of the Michigan High School Athletic Association's 760 member high schools.[1]

The Mackinac Island Public School (MIPS) operated the Thomas W. Ferry School, named after former U.S. Senator Thomas W. Ferry, from the 1860s until 1962. The Ferry School met in the historic wood-frame Indian Dormitory. After state lawmakers asked the Island to build a brick school building, MIPS constructed the present school.