In any case, all Schools of Choice does is take resources away from whomever is left. If those kids left behind are in charter schools, they are not hurt less than kids in a conventional district. It’s not OK to hurt kids in charter schools, just because you don’t like charter schools. The point is, the kids matter, not the grownups, whatever organizational side they are on.

Better to consolidate districts in one fell swoop, rather than spend several years short-changing children from less-agressive families.

It’ still a great article.

Re: [2] Liberal Nimby: Yes, it’s worth pointing out that school board get paid almost nothing and put in hundreds of hours every year. I do appreciate their hard work and service. State law has restricted school board elections to Novembers of even years, which means that now would be a good time for people who might be interested in running for school board (in any district, not just Ann Arbor) to start investigating options.

Re: [3] John Floyd: This is a very astute point about schools of choice and I thought about discussing it a little bit in this column but decided it was getting too complicated! There is no doubt that you could think about recruitment of students for “schools of choice” as a “battle” between districts and that, until last year, Ann Arbor had essentially chosen to stay out of the fray. There’s also no doubt that–for example–in the former Willow Run school district, many of the best students chose to go to the Washtenaw International High School, the Early College Alliance, or one of the local charter schools. And with the best students gone, that ended up negatively affecting the overall test scores, graduation rates, etc. of the Willow Run schools.

On the other hand, if you think that with schools of choice you will be recruiting students who have already defected from local public schools, and gone to the for-profit charters already, then AAPS will in no way be harming other local public school districts. I’d like to hope that is the case because I’m not a big fan of the for-profit charters, but I’m not sure it will be true.

And yes, yes, yes: the real issue in schools of choice is the lack of state funding.

Tangentially, you raise an issue of concern to me: Schools of Choice.

Schools of Choice is a “Robbing Peter to pay Paul” scheme – its a zero-sum game. Any benefits to AAPS kids from adding SOC kids are directly balanced by equal and offsetting harms to the kids at the schools they left behind. I’m not referring to harm to the districts as political entities, I’m referring to the kids in them. The kids left behind after a school-of-choice transfer lose exactly as much as the chosen-district kids gain from receiving that transfer.

The economist in me likes the theory behind schools of choice: everyone in the business of education should feel some heat, it’s not right to force monopolies on markets when there doesn’t seem to be any natural monopoly for that service; the parent in me is conflicted about SOC; but the citizen in me thinks that focusing energy around zero-sum games is genuinely harmful. The real issue here is lack of state funding. Harming kids in Ypsilanti or Saline for our parochial benefit is a non-solution to the real problem.

I admire anyone who runs for elected office, especially the ones that are particularly thankless, like homeowners associations, school boards, town councils, etc. But even though they’re thankless, they’re extremely important. Entire neighborhoods, school systems and communities rise and fall according to the quality of those serving. Bravo to those on the BOE making a positive difference.

When everything’s going fine, many seats go uncontested. In accordance with the “squeaky wheel” phenomenon, when things start going off-track, it gets the attention of the wider public (and hopefully higher-caliber candidates). But it can take years to rectify the problems due to inertia, the election cycle, and the need to replace enough officials to make a difference. When things get better, people lose interest again. So we often see the “teeter totter” effect of organizational performance. (Like when Bush gave away the U.S. budget surplus. But I digress.)

I’m glad some attention is being paid to the process violations at the BOE. It would be useful if a board member could respond directly in these comments. It would also be useful if people thinking about running for the board could view these meetings on demand via CTN’s site (they really can’t be played on demand?) to see who needs replacing, if anyone. Also, an easily-discoverable job description for board members on your website would be a start.

And above all, it would be great if more people were willing to pitch in for some civic service. An ounce of prevention!