Gearing Elementary School

Located at 200 N CARNEY DR, in SAINT CLAIR, Michigan, Gearing Elementary School is a middle-of-the-pack elementary school that teaches 353 students (grades pre-K through 4), operated by East China School District.

Within East China School District, which oversees 9 schools and 3,405 students, Gearing Elementary School is one campus in the system.

On the student-mix side, Gearing Elementary School records that the student body is overwhelmingly White (94%). The remainder reads as 3% Hispanic, 2% Black. That composition is broadly in line with St. Clair County as a whole.

In terms of school funding signals, Staff filings list 23 full-time-equivalent teachers, which works out to roughly 15.3:1 students per teacher. That tracks the state average closely. Roughly 41% of students at Gearing Elementary School qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, a commonly cited indicator of low-income enrollment.

Adjusting for the school's free-and-reduced-lunch share, Gearing Elementary School performs roughly as the BeatsExpectations model predicts for a school with this FRL share. The predicted value is around 48.2%, the actual is 50.2%, a residual of +2.0 points.

In the broader community, community-level numbers for St. Clair County indicate the typical household earns roughly $71,270 per year, 20% of adults hold a bachelor's degree or higher, and the poverty rate sits near 8%. In all, St. Clair County runs 57 public schools (combined enrollment of about 20,511 students), of which Gearing Elementary School is one.

Nearest neighbor: St Clair High School, around 0.6 miles off. Within five miles, there are 4 other public schools. Ranking that nearby cluster on reported proficiency puts Gearing Elementary School at 2nd of 5; the average score across the group is 49.1%.

Geographically, the school is in a bedroom-community area.

Five-year trend. Looking back 7 years, enrollment at Gearing Elementary School has rose 3%, going from 344 students in 2018 to 353 in 2025. The student-to-teacher ratio loosened from 14.2:1 in 2018 to 15.3:1 today.

Inside the community feed, recent activity here tends to focus on enrollment questions, classroom assignments, and PTA news. The community welcomes input from current and former families.