After the countywide schools millage failure, we need a constructive, community-wide budget debate

What happened to the money paid to consultants who assured us the millage proposal would pass? Do we get it back?

Thanks for this, Jen. I was feeling somewhat defeated this morning, but what I really need to do is get energized and involved. My son's education is at stake.

Jen,
1. budget task force, nice idea, but won't get you where you need to go, which is to look at the bloated administration costs and inefficiencies in this district.
2.school budget forums ARE dismal. You usually only get half the information, ie what the AAPS wants you to know, not all the information you need to make an informed decision.
3. I agree, we need constuctive debate. That only happens when all the information is on the table. I agree it's not about art, music and sports. IT'S ABOUT THE CHILDREN!! It's also about administration costs, ie costs away from the children.
The shortfall for this year is a 'projected' shortfall based on non-finalized numbers from Lansing. It will be interesting to see what the administration comes out with as their strategy to address these 'projected' shortfalls. We should know later this month what the actual shortfalls are once Lansing finalizes their budget.
I hope the 'quick' cuts will be at Balas. What the administration decides to cut first will set the tone for how serious they are about real reform. If it's in the classrooms, they're back to their old scare tactics, and are planning another millage run. If it's real cuts in the bloated administration and overhead, then there might be some hope that the AAPS is finally ready to address it's structural problems, and make some much needed reform in the district.

Why cut art, music etc? Sounds like a scare tactic. I see no reason why all teachers shouldn't just share a pay cut instead of picking on certain subjects.

@Anonymous: Because those departments aren't state-mandated, and therefore can be cut without hurting graduation requirements.

Unfortunately, that's all most people care about. They don't actually care about children being able to be creative, or being able to express themselves in any way other than in mathematics or in formal writing.

It would be a great contribution if AnnArbor.com would do some investigation into the claims of the District and various local school funding groups. Taking a deep look at district finances would be one first step. Asking School Board members in-depth questions would be another.

What about a top to bottom universal pay cut for AAPS. With a two year limit and then open up to negotiate getting back to where we were, and maintain the step process for teachers. Is this possible? Who thinks the teachers union, administrators, and board could work together? Until Powerball money trickles down. Yeah, right.

Charter & parochial parents pay taxes too! Remember that the next time you draft a millage request.

Great article. I also support AnnArbor.com doing some good old-fashioned reporting on the AAPS budget as suggested by Matt Hampel.

Jen -

Thank you for the article, it is well reasoned and very helpful.

Your suggestions are well reasoned. Thank you.

I have sat through budget presentations. They were a waste of time, too little detail and too much presentation. Questions were routinely turned away with "that is a privacy issue" or "we don't have that detail with us".

I for one would support a full Saturday deep dive into the school budget. With the preference that the budget information be handed out several days in advance to allow people to get their questions and suggestions researched.

@DonBee: I love that idea. And I agree with you about it being important for people to see the proposed budget well in advance of meetings, so they can have a chance to research and prepare questions.

@MCC: I agree... I hope that the district will be open to answering hard questions about administrative costs, and open to ideas for cutting.

Another way to get involved is to contact your legislators in Lansing. Ask them to do their jobs by properly funding k-12 education in our state.

Here are the links:

http://house.michigan.gov/find_a_rep.asp
http://www.senate.michigan.gov/SenatorInfo/find-your-senator.htm

In the future it might be a good idea to lobby the legislature for legislation that would allow individual school districts to make millage requests instead of this county wide mess involving the WISD. I understand that this could not be done any other way at this time but it is clear that AAPS was hoping that Ann Arbor's population would overwhelm any opposition form other districts. If Ann Arbor wants to spend more that's all well and good but quit trying to stick it to the rest of the county. Ann Arbor might want to consider addressing issues with the MEA first to get control of costs. Getting rid of MESSA by competitive bidding is a good start. The whole state needs to look at getting rid of a number of intermediate school districts. There are way too many of them duplicating services.

The first thing EVERYBODY should do, INCLUDING the school district and people working for WISD and AAPS, is to contact the state and ask them to actually fund education in not only Washtenaw, but statewide. I believe somebody posted contact links in a comment above me.

JSA, I don't think you will find the other public school systems in Washtenaw county happy that this measure failed. AAPS, while the largest district in the county, isn't the only district facing budget shortfalls. Every district is hurting - this measure was to help all of the public school districts, not just the AAPS.

Donbee, what would you expect a budget presentation to be? Yes, they are boring, but most budget presentations are. And a presentation doesn't imply "lets debate and sort out the budget" - it is just what it sounds like - a presentation.

It's so tiring to hear about the supposed bloated administrative costs within the AAPS. Has anybody paid attention to the attrition that has gone on, to the openings not filled? It's whine, whine, whine, but how many of you got involved before, when things "were boring and easy?" It's easy to harp on the district now, when our kids have to deal with the fallout, but don't place all the blame on the district(s).

Chris,

I live in the Washtenaw County section of Milan. There was absolutely no chance of the voters there supporting this. Why I intend to make my displeasure known in the next school board election I will also push for the superintendant to be fired. Milan should never have signed on. I am tired of my property taxes going up because Ann Arbor residents want something.

JSA - we are all unhappy about this. I'm in AA and I'm unhappy that our schools will loose funding because you non-AA guys didn't want to pay. I think we all wish we could ditch each other, but we are linked by law.


Now each school district is left alone with its own budget, so I echo these posts -- get involved. Rumor has it that this will happen quickly, at least in AA, so if you want to have input, do it sooner rather than waiting.

@Chris -

I was responding to Jen's post on going to the workshop.

The session was billed as a workshop (announced on the AAPS web site as "Budget Workshop").

I assumed that in a workshop that there would be information presented and people asked to then comment or work on the budget, to provide input and that questions would be welcomed.

I did not expect a high level presentation on the budget with no depth to the presentation e.g. the transportation budget is $x.x million.

Question: How much of that is for salary, how much for bus maintenance and how much for fuel?

Response: We don't have that detail with us.

Question: How do we get that level of detail?

Response: I don't know.

For a workshop it is very difficult to make any constructive suggestions when you get this kind of presentation.

If it had been billed as a presentation, I would have just watched the school board meeting on cable to see what the numbers were.

I went expecting to roll up my sleeves and get my hands dirty looking for ways to help the district.

Instead I got 2 hours of slideware and a "thank you for attending".

I went one more time and got the same type of presentation. In fact they were the same slides with the numbers updated.

I am willing to dig in and lend my knowledge to the system, I am sure others are too. We want to help keep this 4 percent cut in the budget out of the classrooms ($8 million of $191 million in AAPS).

I am sure we are willing to work with any district in the county. Just because I live in AAPS, does not mean I don't care about the rest.

As to the administration - there are at least 20 high school principals and assistant principals in AAPS, including 2 that are sitting every day at Balas. None of them make less than $100,000 plus benefits. All of them have support staff (1 to 4 people depending on their role). If we went back the number of Principals in the system prior to Skyline, half of them would go away - by the time you count their cost, their staff cost, their benefits, computers, etc - each probably costs the district a cool $200K - get rid of 10 and you have a cool $2 million in savings without touching the classroom.

Supposedly non-teaching teachers were cut heavily a few years ago, but I can not get a straight answer (David Jesse?) on how many teachers union personnel are on the payroll but not assigned to teaching duties on a daily basis.

The problem with voting for the millage was simple, no one was willing to tell me where the dollars were going. I don't want to see pay or benefits cut, I don't want to see staff in the classrooms cut.

I do want to see rationalization of busing (per the AAPS study).

I do want to see principals either interacting with teachers and students or not in the role of principal.

I do want to see rationalization of all the health care plans - not changing the benefits, but open bidding by providers for the whole pool of employees (Rep Dillon, D - indicated that doing that state wide for 500,000 employees was worth $900 million - so if AAPS has 3,000 employees - what is that worth to AAPS in savings?).

Please lets get real data on the table folks (Any school board or administrators reading this) and lets have an open discussion about what is what.

If you can go deep and show me (and many others) that you have done the efficiency thing. I will change my vote and my postings to support a vote in May with the School Board elections.

Those who want in-depth reporting on the district's budget, please e-mail me at davidjesse@annarbor.com and let me know what questions and data you want me to look for and ask.

I asked for several things today from the district and will keep doing so.

It might take me a few days to get it from the district and get it up, but I'll plug away at it.

It's rather astonishing for a reporter to ask readers what data should be gathered and what questions asked about school funding two days after the referendum has been held. The quality of information and analysis offered by Annarbor.com has been abysmal. Further, as an experiment in online community-based journalism, this has invited some truly bewildering misunderstandings and misrepresentations of school funding and administration, and much ill-tempered online commentary. The millage's opponents have vilified those supporting the initiative, and some of these local partisans have seized the opportunity to voice highly divisive antagonism to teachers and their union. Proponents of the millage did not help their case by not offering a detailed discussion of budget cuts that have been already enacted and specific plans for further cost-cutting reforms that must be taken. Nor have they offered a coherent and detailed view of the changing revenues, expenditures and demographics of districts across the county. Bad reporting and vituperative commentary have made it more difficult for us to find our way together through a crisis caused by the larger economic conditions in Michigan and the US.

@glacialerratic

David has been asking and searching for data for more than 2 weeks, there is even a thread with some of it. Now he is asking readers what more they want. He has been digging hard. I appreciate what he has done. When the News was around, I never saw this level of digging and interaction. One or two stories would have been it and maybe 20 letters to the editor.

The staff here has been trying hard.

I know many people are upset and there are strong feelings on both sides - lets try to find solutions to the issues, please?

Jen,
The easiest cost savings are related to health care benefits. Eliminate the bias for MEA sponsored insurance and buy direct from BCBS and add a co-pay of 10% and the AAPS should save at least 1.5 million. Why won't the AAEA allow this to happen?

School district, cities, townships, counties, states, and this damn country better get their fiscal act together. Finally the citizens are waking up and asking hard questions and not just signing blank checks based on fear tactics such as, "the children will suffer".

It's time we let the powers that be know they answer to us not us to them. Not one more dime of tax on anything until I know they have their budgets in order. No more waste!

Here is an interesting link to classroom vs administrative costs at some Michigan schools. I wonder where the schools in Washtenaw County would fall on this chart?

http://freep.com/article/20091106/NEWS05/91105071/1318/

I think this post belongs here. Listening to those working in the education field discuss education puts me in mind of an experience I was a part of last year.

My son insisted that he needed a Mac computer, so on his birthday, I bought him one. It was pretty much a nightmare from the beginning, and we soon found ourselves standing in line in the Mac store and speaking to a Mac "genius" (their term), as the wireless router built into the Time Machine backup hard drive could not connect to the internet. In mere minutes, this "genius" had convinced my son that using his time machine hard drive to manually back-up his documents was a bad idea ("you might copy over other files"), and this was why the wireless portion did not work. He claimed to have recopied the correct drivers into the device, and began packing it up.

I stopped him. I wanted to see it work. He tried to ignore me, and said my son was the customer. Bad move, as I quickly informed him that "I" had paid for it, and we weren't going anywhere until I saw it work. And sure enough, when we plugged it in and tested it, it still wouldn't connect. Reluctantly, he went into the back and brought out another time machine hard drive. After 2 trips to the back, he finally found one that actually worked, and we were on our way.

But I was shocked by the demeanor of my son, who has been using computers all his life. He has been backing up his documents for years, and the danger of copying over files is something that he was well aware of. Yet, in mere moments, this "genius" had spun tales of the noble Mac and its complexity and had reduced him to a head-shaking zombie, willing to accept absolute nonsense as fact. As an experienced computer user, he should have known better. Had I not been there, he would have returned home with the same problem he left with.

Many educators use this same trick on the public, spinning tales of their dedication and commitment in pursuit of the lofty goal of educating our children. You can almost envision the noble knights in their quest for the holy grail when they speak. And experience has taught them that people will fall for it, and thus, many will not ask the hard questions of them. How dare we question the noble knight? Hence the reason no documentation was brought to the Workshop that has been written about on this site, and no contingency plan was in place in the event the millage was defeated. Don't be fooled: that's not nobility, that's arrogance.

They're hoping you'll forget this basic truth: we were all in grade school once, and the reality was, of the 30-40 public school teachers we encountered as students, most of us could count on one hand the number of good teachers that we had. And those teachers didn't hand-hold: they made you do the work and educate yourself by demanding more of you, making you push yourself to the limit. Things are no different now. Our children will be lucky to have 4 or 5 good teachers during their entire tenure as students.

We need to keep the balogna for the sandwiches, and look at educators in the same critical manner as we do other professions, and make workplace changes in the same business manner as any private business would.

@DonBee: we did a similar story a while ago. You can find it here: http://www.annarbor.com/news/local-schools-districts-spending-on-instruction-takes-slight-dip/index.php.

There's a chart at the bottom, along with links to all the district's audits and the Michigan Department of Education report both my report and the Free Press' report is based on.

Thanks to David Jesse for his persistence in getting information about this. Kudos to you.

Before we all throw up our hands in despair, let's think carefully about how to restructure the school/district to create a more efficient and effective (at teaching kids) organization.

1) Cutting art, music, etc. whole sale will not be done. The state has mandated that these are taught, and required for HS graduation. So that's a red herring on the part of the district and commenters here.
2) The data on class size shows that, in a district like AAPS, reducing class size DOES NOT improve student learning. Sure, there are high numbers that hinder learning. But classes between 20 and 25 in elementary are perfectly reasonable, and perhaps more depending on the teacher, school, population, etc. There is evidence that class sizes below are 18 are actually problematic and are less effective than larger class sizes. Reduced class size can be helpful in educating disadvantaged students, ie. impoverished, minority, learning disabled, or English language learners. If we want to really make the schools effective, we should take care with class size in schools and classrooms serving these populations. But in others, it's not really a worry.
3) In terms of school size, there is evidence that high schools with an enrollment of 800 or less are too small for a lot of reasons. They are expensive with less payoff, they cannot serve the population of students well because they do not have the resources to do so. The exception is for at-risk students, those with learning and behavior problems. Also, for the same group of disadvantaged students I mention above.
4) If we really want to maintain and improve the AAPS, then we need to focus on the quality of instruction. Teaching is a professional skill that can be improved, and we should put our resources into improving teaching, and I mean the actual work of teaching. Payraises, benefits, busing--none of this has anything to do with the quality of teaching that goes on in any classroom. You could pay a teacher a lot or a little, and it doesn't link to what they do with students each day.

So, how about we stop accusing each other of not having kids in school, or bringing on global catastrophe, or in being haters, or being spendthrifts. We need to do the hard work now. And that means the district is going to have to reveal the details of its revenue and spending, and we will all make sacrifices and tough choices. But this can be done.

Longfellow,

Your Mac story contains a good lesson, but I am distressed with your comment, “Our children will be lucky to have 4 or 5 good teachers during their entire tenure as students.” As an involved parent and school board member (2001-2005), I met many, many outstanding teachers and other educational professionals. The vast majority of the AAPS support staff, including facilities management, technology support, custodians, bus drivers, lunch monitors, grounds crew and secretaries are extremely dedicated and take pride in providing excellent support. There is always room for improvement, but overall the AAPS staff is one of the best.

And David Jesse brings a balanced, intelligent perspective to his coverage of AAPS news.

Kathy,

Re-read the Mac story.


Like the facilities management, technology support, custodians, bus drivers, lunch monitors, grounds crew and secretaries you cite, the Mac genius (I still stop & smirk when I think about what happened, and their use of that term) was extremely dedicated to providing excellent support, too. One doesn't acquire that job without the required educational background and experience. And let's be fair: we did leave with a working unit.


But, this is apples to oranges, as to my point.


Although extremely dedicated to providing excellent support, were we to line up thirty to forty Mac geniuses, this man would rate in the bottom percentile. The top group would consist of a number that you could count on one hand.


You see, education is no different than any other field: being able to do a job, as opposed to being quite skilled at it, are two different things.