It’s a long, long way from Bay Mills Community College, near the shores of frigid Lake Superior, to Detroit.
You can measure that distance in miles (about 350) or in drive time (roughly 5½ hours) or in cultures (an American Indian-governed two-year college and a predominantly African-American, economically declining city).
But distance, time and demographics aside, the school and the city are united by Bay Mills’ status as the nation’s only tribally-controlled college that authorizes quasi-public schools, known officially as public school academies. And it’s the state’s second-largest authorizer of charter schools.
What Allyn Cameron calls the college’s “mission toward charter schools” began out of frustration as the small community college in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula enrolled many high school graduates who did not have enough math or English skills to do college work.
“When we would get new students coming in, we were spending two, three sometimes four years to get them up to the level to take college-level courses. We found that disturbing,” says Cameron, a longtime member of the college’s board of regents and the communications director for the Bay Mills Indian Community in Brimley, Mich.
There was another motivation as well: the tribe’s desire to re-establish its own school on the reservation for Native and White children, said Dr. Patrick Shannon, the college’s director of charter schools.
“When the charter school law came along, the tribe saw an opportunity not only to help Bay Mills, but also other tribes and other minority groups,” Shannon said. “It’s a unique relationship. Usually you don’t see tribes working with state governments.”
