Justus Gage Elementary School

Set in DOWAGIAC, Michigan, Justus Gage Elementary School is a tight-knit K-5 school, one of the schools within Dowagiac Union School District. It hosts 262 students across grades pre-K through 5. Enrollment runs roughly 29% below the state mean of about 369.

Dowagiac Union School District runs 7 schools in total, collectively educating 1,815 students. Justus Gage Elementary School is one of those campuses.

On the student-mix side, Justus Gage Elementary School lists that White students make up the majority at 66%; the rest breaks down as 16% Hispanic, 8% multiracial, 6% Black, 3% Native American. That is meaningfully less White than the county at large, where the share is closer to 85%.

In terms of school funding signals, Staff filings list 17 full-time-equivalent teachers, which works out to roughly 15.1:1 students per teacher. The state averages around 15.8:1, so this campus is tighter than the state norm typical. Around 75% of the student body qualifies for free or reduced-price meals, often used as a Title I proxy. Set against Cass County (around 54%), the school's rate is somewhat above typical.

With demographic context factored in, Justus Gage Elementary School performs roughly as the BeatsExpectations model predicts for a school with this FRL share. The predicted value is around 33.1%, the actual is 42.5%, a residual of +9.3 points.

In the surrounding community, census data for Cass County shows the typical household earns roughly $70,443 per year, 22% of adults hold a bachelor's degree or higher, and the poverty rate sits near 9%. In all, Cass County runs 23 public schools (combined enrollment of about 6,258 students), of which Justus Gage Elementary School is one.

Nearest neighbor: North Pointe Center, around 0.3 miles off. Counting just inside five miles, 6 other public schools cluster around Justus Gage Elementary School. On composite proficiency, Justus Gage Elementary School comes 1st of 5 in the immediate cluster, ahead of the nearby-schools average of 32.6%.

Geographically, the school is in a town-based area.

Trend over the last 7 years. Looking back 7 years, enrollment at Justus Gage Elementary School has ticked down 6%, going from 279 students in 2018 to 262 in 2025. Class-load math has pulled in: from 16.4:1 in 2018 to 15.1:1 in 2025.

On the community side, posts here usually surface around enrollment questions, classroom assignments, and PTA news. Members of the school community can share what they know.