A new school built specifically for students who rely on ventilators, feeding tubes, and daily nursing care has opened in Sterling Heights, giving Macomb County families a long-awaited home base for some of the region's most intensive special education programs. The Donald Bollinger Education Center, funded by a $97.5 million voter-approved bond, held its dedication ceremony this week, marking the culmination of years of planning, demolition, and construction on the site of a shuttered elementary school.
The Macomb Intermediate School District opened the center to serve students with significant disabilities, according to The Detroit News. MISD provides specialized services and support programs across the county, working with children and families from birth through age 26, and the newspaper reports the district serves Macomb County's local school districts through this kind of regional coordination that individual districts cannot offer alone.
Among the families celebrating the opening is Ashley Levell, the parent of a son with special needs and president of the Bovenschen parent group, who described the center as a dream come to life, per the Detroit News report. She thanked the district for building the facility and said she was grateful that her son AJ and other people with special needs now had the Bollinger Center as a place to grow and learn.
What's Inside the New Building
The center includes health services, nursing care, and equipment for students with complex medical needs, including support for ventilators, tracheostomies, and feeding tubes. It also offers physical and occupational therapy along with speech and language services, and the building includes a therapeutic pool, sensory rooms, motor development rooms, and dedicated therapy spaces, the same report shows.
Michael Devault said the center provides specialized programming, advanced therapeutic services, and educational environments tailored to students' strengths and needs. The facility is named after Donald “Bolly” Bollinger, an educator who advocated for students with special needs and their families; Devault described Bollinger as a collaborative leader, mentor, and advocate whose work expanded opportunities and support systems for students with diverse needs.
Bollinger himself served as Deputy Superintendent of the Macomb Intermediate School District, an administrator who managed multi-million-dollar district budgeting and special education millage advocacy, according to Michigan Capitol Confidential.
From Shuttered Elementary to Regional Hub
The Bollinger Center was built on the site of Warren's former Fillmore Elementary School, which closed in 2015 after Warren Consolidated Schools had invested millions in previous upgrades to the building. Demolition of the old elementary school began in early 2024 after MISD acquired the site, and city council records reviewed by the City of Sterling Heights noted the new facility plan included 192 parking spaces on the property.
While construction was underway, students with moderate to severe cognitive impairments attended Bovenschen School in Warren, which serves roughly 190 to 290 students aged 3 to 26 from across southern Macomb County. The Bollinger Center fits into MISD's broader network of specialized center schools, which also includes Glen Peters School in Clinton Township, Lutz School for Work Experience for young adults ages 18 to 26, and Maple Lane Elementary for students with emotional impairments.
How Voters and Bond Financing Made It Possible
The project traces back to a 2022 bond proposal that authorized raising up to about $97.5 million for special education services, a measure approved by more than 70% of voters. County-wide, Macomb Intermediate School District voters passed the special education building and site bond proposal with 245,118 votes in favor to 102,666 against across all 342 county precincts, according to ClickOnDetroit.
S&P Global Ratings later assigned an AA long-term rating to MISD's $97.465 million Series 2023 general obligation bonds, noting that the district serves approximately 19,000 special education students and 120,000 total students across 21 public school districts and 18 charter schools in Macomb County, per S&P Global Ratings. That scale underscores why Intermediate School Districts like MISD exist: Michigan's Revised School Code assigns them primary responsibility for regional special education administration that individual local districts cannot provide on their own.
Michigan's 56 Intermediate School Districts do not receive standard state per-pupil foundation allowances the way traditional districts do. Instead, S&P Global Ratings notes they rely on a combination of local property tax millages, special education foundation funds, state categoricals, and federal grants, which is part of why major facility projects like the Bollinger Center require voter-approved bonds rather than routine state appropriations.
Construction of the main facility was scheduled for completion in summer 2026, and MISD financial filings indicate remaining bond proceeds are designated for repairs and upgrades to the district's other existing special education sites beyond this single building. That broader allocation reflects how the 2022 bond measure was designed to touch multiple facilities across the county, not just the new Sterling Heights center.
A Statewide Surge in Demand
The opening also arrives amid rising demand for early childhood special education statewide. In August, the Michigan Department of Lifelong Education, Advancement, and Potential reported a record 53,000 applications statewide for state PreK and early childhood special education programs, marking a 15.7% increase from August 2025, according to MiLEAP. That growth adds pressure on regional providers like MISD to expand specialized capacity.
Locally, the push to support specialized instruction has also drawn recognition. In April, the Macomb County Association of School Administrators honored more than 60 local educators at its 40th annual awards ceremony, where MISD leadership emphasized the essential role of specialized instruction for county students, as reported by Macomb Today. Facilities like the Bollinger Center depend on that same pipeline of trained special education teachers, nurses, and therapists to keep programs running.
For now, the center stands as the most visible result of the 2022 bond vote, giving families like the Levells a purpose-built home for services that were previously scattered across aging buildings. Questions remain for future reporting around long-term staffing of specialized medical personnel and how MISD's remaining bond funds will be distributed across its other center programs.
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