Enhancement millage lacks plan to make schools stronger in long run

The answer, local school districts hope, is a request on the Nov. 3 ballot for a countywide school enhancement millage that would generate $30 million a year over the next five years.

But this request, rather than galvanizing the community around our schools, has divided people, and even advocates acknowledge a big tax increase is a tough sell.

This much we all should be able to agree on: Quality education is essential to our future, and given the high level of student achievement in many of our local districts, it would be tragic to let our schools deteriorate into something mediocre or worse.

Given what’s at stake, we wish we could join those who support this ballot proposal, but we can’t endorse it in its current form. We think it asks too much money for too many years, without an accompanying plan for structural changes needed to make our schools stronger, more efficient and more successful in the long run.

This is, ultimately, not a “enhancement’’ millage. It’s a status quo millage that would help shelter districts from the funding cuts that are buffeting them.

We see why that is attractive to millage supporters at a time when a district like Ann Arbor projects that it could lose more than $16 million in funding over this school year and next.

We don’t want to see the financial rug pulled out from under our schools. And we understand that it’s going to take more than a year or two for schools to transform themselves into 21st Century educational institutions that can thrive in the economic realities that all industries face today.

A more modest request, over a shorter period, would be a reasonable way to help schools through a transition that they need to make.

But that’s not what’s on the ballot. Instead, taxpayers are being asked for a hefty millage increase that seems more aimed at propping local districts up in their current form.

This request for another 2 mills - which would add $250 a year to the tax bill of someone who owns a $250,000 home - is more than many Washtenaw County residents can afford in these hard economic times.

Ann Arbor, in particular, has a history of strong support for schools, and there may be enough votes in the city to carry this proposal, regardless of how the vote goes elsewhere across the county.

If so, schools will be spared the brunt of the budget trauma that’s coming otherwise. But they also may be spared hard decisions on such issues as pension and health care costs, or a hard look at levels of spending not going directly to instruction, or a healthy examination of districts elsewhere that are getting good results at lower spending levels, or the urgency of finding more savings by consolidating services.

This millage request would help public schools to get by for another five years - only, we suspect, to find themselves back in the same predicament when the millage money runs out. That’s a steep price to ask of taxpayers for what feels like a short-term solution at best.

(Editor’s note: This editorial was published in today's newspaper and reflects the opinion of the AnnArbor.com Editorial Board. Albert Berriz, a community member who joined on our Editorial Board in September, has become a vocal opponent of the school enhancement millage, and agreed last week to resign from our board. He was not involved in our deliberations on this issue.)