Ruth Kraut

And then, come November and December, I realize that once again, I failed to spread out my giving – and I had better pull out my checkbook. Writing the bulk of these checks at the end of the year has a benefit, in that it allows me to look at all of my donations at once. But it also means that I’m in a rush and I don’t always take the time to reflect. So this is my opportunity.

Like many of you, we make donations to local, national, and international groups that focus on a wide range of issues. For us, those organizations do work related to health, the environment, politics, women’s issues, Jewish groups, social action, human services, and more.

Although I do give to some groups that, loosely speaking, fit the category of “education,” those entities do not make up a significant proportion of our donations. I confess to a certain ambivalence to giving to such groups – because, in many ways, I’m already a big contributor to public education. And it’s likely that you are, too.

In this column, I discuss the concept of donations – both voluntary (to charitable causes) and involuntary (through taxes). I talk about ways that most of us are already contributing, and provide some information that will help you give even more, if you’re so inclined.

When I sent an early draft of this piece to Steven Norton, an Ann Arbor resident and executive director of Michigan Parents for Schools, he shared this thought: “I’m not sure I agree that we are ‘donating’ to the schools, in the sense that this means an optional charitable contribution. I don’t feel like I’m donating when I help pay for police or fire services, or road maintenance.” He then referred to a quote by Oliver Wendell Holmes: “Taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society.”

His comments sent me straight to the dictionary – several dictionaries, in fact – looking for the distinction between donate and contribute. It wasn’t an easy search to find exactly what I was looking for.

For instance, the Merriam-Webster online dictionary defines donate as a verb that means “to give (money, food, clothes, etc.) in order to help a person or organization,” and “to make a gift of, especially: to contribute to a public or charitable cause.” That certainly implies a voluntary aspect. Yet a synonym for donate is contribute, “to give or supply in common with others.” In other words, contribute may or may not have a voluntary aspect.

Certainly, taxes are not voluntary, but they are contributions to a common cause. So in this column, when I use the term donor, donate or donation, I mean it in the sense of contributing to an important common good – public education.

The Property Tax Conundrum: I’m A Big Donor

I already give thousands of dollars to the vast educational enterprise that is Michigan’s public education system – as do many of you. Most of the sales tax I pay, a portion of my income tax, and the majority of my property taxes go to education. If you live in Ann Arbor, your tax bill includes line items for the State Education Tax, the Ann Arbor Public Schools, the Washtenaw Intermediate School District, and Washtenaw Community College.

More than 20 years ago – when I first became a homeowner – the taxes I paid for public schools actually went directly to the Ann Arbor Public Schools. In 1994, though, all of that changed with the passage of Proposal A.

The goal of that 1994 statewide ballot initiative was to create more equitable funding across all districts and to keep property taxes from escalating dramatically. But Proposal A took away most local control over school funding, though districts can still request voter approval to levy local millages for building construction, repairs, and maintenance – not, however, for operating expenses.

The state collects taxes directly from residential and non-residential property owners – 6 mills each, annually – and pools that money into the state’s School Aid Fund (SAF), which also includes revenues from sales and income taxes, state lottery revenue and other sources. Out of this fund, the state pays local school districts a per-pupil allotment – a variable amount set by the state legislature that can increase or decrease each year. In addition, state law controls the amount of taxes that school districts can levy directly – those that are not pooled into the SAF. Beyond the 6 mills that go into the SAF, for example, there’s an additional tax on non-residential property owners, but the state caps that tax at 18 mills.

Both the funding from non-SAF local property taxes and from the total School Aid Fund are factored into an amount called the per-pupil “foundation allowance.” This amount varies by district. Ann Arbor’s per-pupil funding for the current fiscal year, which began July 1, is $9,050 for each student. It accounts for most of the district’s revenues, with other revenues including the district’s share of a countywide special education millage and from federal grants. The per-pupil funding has been stagnant or falling for the last decade.

State per-pupil funding chart. (Source: Michigan Parents for Schools)

Because of Michigan’s complex system of funding public schools and the fact that Ann Arbor is a relatively affluent community, today Ann Arbor is – as AAPS board member Christine Stead is rightly fond of explaining – a “donor district.” That is, Ann Arbor taxpayers are paying more into the statewide system than the district receives back in state aid. Steve Norton of Michigan Parents for Schools told me that AAPS gets back from the state less than half – about 47% – of what local taxpayers actually pay to the state for education.

I find the “per-pupil” approach to funding to be particularly frustrating. It’s often an unfair way to allocate funding, because although incremental costs change with the addition or subtraction of kids to a school, many of the base costs don’t change. For instance, when Pfizer closed its large research operation in Ann Arbor several years ago, many families moved out of this community. The children in those families left AAPS schools – along with the per-pupil funding for those students. Although funding dropped because of those departures, the fixed costs for educating the thousands of remaining students didn’t decrease proportionately.

When it comes to per-pupil funding, my family has been an exceptionally big contributor. For the past 15-plus years, I’ve had 1, 2, or 3 kids enrolled in the public schools, and each of my kids has brought their per-pupil “foundation” allowance. So my family is a “donor” to public schools in two ways – as part of the larger property-taxed community, and as a family that has chosen to stay in the public school system.

In some ways, I don’t mind being a “donor” to the state’s public school system, which includes supporting districts that are much poorer than AAPS. For example, my taxes are supporting the Kalkaska schools [1] – and really, I don’t mind (too much) paying for that.

But I do mind that Ann Arbor taxpayers can no longer levy additional millages to pay for operating expenses for our own Ann Arbor Public Schools.

And as an aside, I also mind that my taxes are supporting the Education Achievement Authority, an entity that the state uses to take over schools that are designated as failing. For a longer and fairly neutral analysis of the EAA, I’d suggest reading this piece from the Michigan Policy Network. You’ll find a more critical view at the Inside the EAA website – which includes EAA documents obtained through the Michigan Freedom of Information Act by state legislators and others trying to counteract the authority’s secrecy.

The Parent Conundrum: I’m (Still) A Big Donor

But taxes aren’t the only way I contribute to local education. As a parent, I’m constantly being asked to donate to school-related activities. Certain expenses that I pay have directly or indirectly benefited my children. Those costs include paying $500 for my son to play high school basketball ($280 for the district’s registration fee and pay-to-play, plus other team-related costs), field trip expenses, and PTO dues.

I feel like I get milked dry by these costs – and it doesn’t make me want to jump up with donations for other activities. Over the past several years, I have spent thousands of dollars on school-related activities. Luckily, I can afford these expenses – and I understand that many families aren’t so fortunate.

Yes, I know. I signed up for having kids, and my kids are lucky to have these opportunities. So no, I’m not complaining. I’m just explaining why it is that when someone suggests I pay even more, I think: Wait a second – I’m already paying for the essentials, as a taxpayer, and as a parent who sends my kids to these schools. And I’m already paying for the extras – at least, those that involve my children. You want me to pay even more?

Must I Donate Again?

One way that we’re asked to pay even more is through donations to nonprofit foundations. Most of our local school districts, for example, have affiliated nonprofit educational foundations that solicit contributions. Historically, these foundations have been used for enrichment activities – not for core operating expenses.

Locally, that started to change in 2009 when a countywide operating millage – the only kind permitted under Proposal A – was defeated. (It passed in Ann Arbor, but failed in much of the rest of the county.) After that defeat, the Ann Arbor Public Schools Educational Foundation decided to try to take up the slack with its “A Million Reasons” campaign. The name came from the idea that if everyone who supported the millage just gave the foundation the same amount of money that they would have paid in new taxes, the district would be in good shape. But that didn’t happen – and the campaign fell short of its fundraising goal that was intended to help with the basics of public education.

“Oh no,” my friend Laurie said to me as we discussed this on my annual Thanksgiving trip to my hometown. Laurie is on the board of her local educational foundation. “That doesn’t make any sense. Taxes are meant to fund schools. Local school foundations should focus on the extras.”

Now in fairness to the AAPS Educational Foundation, Laurie lives in a state that funds schools more generously, and in a district that probably gets more than twice as much as Ann Arbor does, per pupil.

But I’ll admit to sharing Laurie’s squeamishness. And the idea of the foundation spending so much social capital to raise only one million dollars – when the Ann Arbor schools budget is around $180 million – was never persuasive to me.

On the other hand, when I shared this perspective with Steve Norton via email, he noted that “personal donations are a last resort when the normal course of public policy has failed completely to meet the needs of our communities.” While he agreed with my friend that education foundations should pay for the “extras,” he also pointed to California, where local education foundations often pay for basics like salaries of whole programs – such as gym, music and art. The cause for California’s situation is similar to Michigan, he noted: a state tax system that was changed to strangulate public services. (In the case of California, their crisis was prompted by Prop 13.) “I hope we never get to that point,” Norton wrote to me, “but we are certainly headed in that direction.”

To me, the idea of asking educational foundations to make up a shortfall in public funding is a tough sell. However, the ideal that schools should be publicly funded is being challenged – and that’s still my ideal, and my values. And charitable giving is all about reflecting your ideals and values.

Multiple Ways to Give Even More

None of this is meant to imply that you shouldn’t donate to public schools, or to the broader educational enterprise. It is possible to donate directly to your local school district, without an educational foundation as an intermediary. The Ann Arbor Public Schools system has a donation policy, and probably most other local school districts do as well.

Many music teachers, for instance, will happily provide a new home for a serviceable instrument. (We donated my husband’s cello, which he stopped playing many, many years ago. His mother had maintained it in meticulous condition, hoping against hope that a grandchild would pick it up. They didn’t.)

The basic rule of thumb is, if you are interested in donating an item to a school, check with the building administrator to make sure it would be useful. And, of course, the schools also will gladly accept direct financial support – last year, for example, the Argus Planetarium at Pioneer High was renovated using a direct donation.

Or if you want to donate to one of the local educational foundations, here are links to several in Washtenaw County: the Ann Arbor Public Schools Educational Foundation; the Chelsea Education Foundation; the Educational Foundation of Dexter; the Manchester Community Schools Foundation; the Foundation for Saline Area Schools; the Whitmore Lake Foundation for Educational Excellence; and the Ypsilanti Community Schools Foundation.

Nearly every school – maybe every school – has a parent-teacher organization (PTO), and generally they are also 501(c)3 nonprofits. So if you want to support your local school, you can give directly to the PTO. The PTO directs its funds to the programs or activities that the parents and teachers want to support. Some of the PTOs have very elaborate fundraising activities. The Burns Park Run, for example, raises money to support the Burns Park Elementary PTO programs, and Ann Arbor Open has turned Scrip into a high art form. Even if they don’t have organized fundraising efforts, all PTOs can use your support.

Perhaps you have a special place in your heart for the arts, or for environmental issues. Most of the schools have special funds (or a special nonprofit – yes, many of these are auxiliary groups with nonprofit status) to fund music, theater, athletics, and more. And the Ann Arbor Area Community Foundation has an environmental education fund that is meant to support the Ann Arbor schools.

Finally, there are many organizations that support kids and families, in ways both academically-related and in fighting poverty. For instance, groups like Peace Neighborhood Center, Avalon Housing, and Community Action Network support low-income families in particular neighborhoods with after-school tutoring. The Student Advocacy Center fights for kids at risk of, or threatened with, suspension and expulsion. And other organizations, like 826 Michigan, bring after-school tutoring to the masses. (A special shout-out to 826 Michigan for pairing up with the Ypsilanti cafe Beezy’s, which is open for breakfast and lunch, and then provides a space for 826 Michigan’s after-school tutoring.)

I don’t mean to give an exhaustive list, but rather to share some examples. Please do add to these ideas in the comments section.

Giving, Getting, and Governing

I’ve explained how I’m already a big contributor to the schools. But it’s not just that we give a lot. We get a lot, too – and so do residents who don’t have kids. I don’t mean that in a high-level, theoretical “we-want-good-schools” way. I mean that in an economic sense. That’s because perceptions of schools are major drivers of property values, and property values affect much more than schools.

So in the next few days, we will give to some school-related causes, and you might too. But remember – the bulk of school funding comes through the state, and that funding has been slashed over and over again in the past decade.

Perhaps the most effective donation you can make is your donation of time and effort to convince legislators to provide more funding to public schools. That’s how public schools get funding, and where reform will need to occur if we want the current situation to improve.

Keeping our public schools both public and nonprofit, at this point, requires a lot of advocacy. In my opinion, two excellent sources of information are Michigan Parents for Schools and the Tri-County Alliance for Public Education.

I’ve been writing about year-end donations, and when the year ends, a lot of people turn to New Year’s resolutions, too. While you are making your list of resolutions, I hope you’ll make room for one more thing: advocating for public, nonprofit schools. I hope you’ll advocate for schools that are for children, not for corporations or for-profit charter chains. And I hope you’ll advocate for adequate funding.

Whether you’re a donor, an advocate, or both, this I believe: together, we can make a difference.

Notes

[1] I’m not picking on the Kalkaska schools. Kalkaska became the poster child for school funding reform when it closed its doors early in the spring of 1993 after the latest of several attempts at passing an operating millage failed. [For more background, read this March 6, 1993 article in the Ludington Daily News.] Proposal A was the product of efforts to equalize school funding regardless of local tax base, coupled with then-Gov. John Engler’s promise to reduce property taxes.

Ruth Kraut is an Ann Arbor resident and parent of three children who have all attended the Ann Arbor Public Schools. She writes at Ann Arbor Schools Musings (a2schoolsmuse.blogspot.com) about education issues in Ann Arbor, Washtenaw County, and Michigan.

The Chronicle relies in part on regular voluntary subscriptions to support our local reporting and columnists. Check out this link for details: Subscribe to The Chronicle. And if you’re already supporting us, please encourage your friends, neighbors and colleagues to help support The Chronicle, too!

Ruth Kraut

Next week, the board of the Ann Arbor Public Schools will need to cut about 5% from the district’s budget. That’s a reduction of about $8.6 million. Teachers have already taken a 3% pay cut.

Per-pupil funding for next year ($9,025) will be less than the per-pupil funding of 12 years ago in 2001-2002 ($9,034). So it’s no surprise that we’re at the point where cuts are painful. Cutting teachers, cutting programs – none of it is happy news. There will be consequences. The question is, what kind of consequences?

In the civil rights world, a “disparate impact” occurs when a policy is non-discriminatory in its intent but affects a “protected class” of people in a disproportionate way. In Michigan’s Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act, for example, these protected classes include race, religion, color, national origin, age, sex, height, weight, and marital status.

AAPS is a district with a large achievement gap – between white students and African American and Hispanic/Latino students. And this gap has persisted for many years. Although in state civil rights law, income is not a protected status, income is highly correlated with race, age, and marital status. District-wide, there is also an achievement gap that is related to income: Poor kids are more likely to do poorly in school.

So it’s important to consider the AAPS budget from a perspective of potential disparate impacts. On the surface, the proposed budget cuts treat all students equally. But if we look deeper, would we find that certain budget cuts worsen – or perhaps improve – the achievement gap?

Three proposed budget cuts have raised a significant amount of opposition this year: (1) eliminating high school transportation; (2) cutting reading intervention teachers; and (3) cutting seventh hour or making it a tuition-only option. Together, these three account for just under $1.5 million of the $8.6 million in cuts. Do these cuts, in particular, have a disparate impact on any groups?

High School Transportation

One of the still-pending proposals is to cut all transportation for high school students, unless it’s related to special education. That would affect all students outside of the walk zones, including students who take school buses and those who ride Ann Arbor Transportation Authority buses using school-provided bus passes. In this year’s one-day spring “ride count,” just 29% of the students who could take school buses did take them. But remember, not all kids take the bus every day. If the counting were done over the course of a couple of weeks, the number might be closer to 40%.

AAPS districts for its three comprehensive high schools.

Whatever the exact percentage, it doesn’t appear that ridership is distributed evenly across the grades. My own daughter’s experience is probably not unusual. In ninth and tenth grades, she took the school bus to Skyline nearly every day. In eleventh grade, she didn’t have a first hour class, so she generally took the AATA bus (which frequently ran late, to her great consternation). In twelfth grade, though she didn’t have a car, a couple of her friends did – and she got rides to school almost every day.

The district doesn’t collect data on or analyze the school bus riders based on income. But it’s plausible that a higher proportion of students on the free and reduced price lunch program take school buses compared to students from families with higher incomes, who are much more likely to have an extra car.

So cutting high school transportation will affect younger students more than older students. The transportation cut will affect people employed with less flexible jobs more than it will impact people who have more flexible jobs. Families with no car or one car will be impacted more than two- or three-car families. For those students who can ride an AATA bus (or two, or three, after transfers), it will cost them money – because the district will not be able to provide any bus passes if it cuts general transportation. That’s $1.50/day x $180/year, or $270 per student.

AAPS is a very large district! Think about the student who lives at the low/moderate-income Arrowwood Hills Housing Cooperative, off Pontiac Trail. Students there are districted for Skyline High School. It’s possible to arrive at school on an AATA bus. The #1 bus leaves Arrowwood at 6:26 a.m., and after a transfer downtown to the #18, that student would arrive at Skyline at 7:06 a.m. (a little early for a scheduled school start of 7:30). So for less than $300 per year per student, an Arrowwood Hills resident can get transportation to Skyline.

Transfers required to get from Arrowwood to Skyline High School, if a student takes AATA buses. Some students, however, live in areas that don’t get AATA service, making it even more difficult if the school system eliminates transportation to high schools.

But what if that same low/moderate-income student lives in a manufactured home community out on Jackson or South Wagner roads? No AATA routes serve that area. Directions on Google Maps suggest that you first drive to the nearest bus stop! What if your parent has to be at work at 7 a.m. and there are no “extra” cars? What if you are too young to drive? What if you live on a busy street without a sidewalk or shoulder, three miles from school? As a parent, do you want your teenager walking on that street in the dark?

I live in a two-parent, two-car household, and we both have some flexibility with our schedules. And as my son was looking at high schools this winter, we were very intrigued by the Washtenaw International High School. Yet I was worried about the question, “How would I get him there, and back?” (WiHi is located at the former East Middle School in Ypsilanti.) I knew it would be much easier for me if he could walk, bike, or take the bus to an in-district school.

But what if transportation is cut? I can tell you that if I lived in a corner of the district (say, a rural area near South Lyon, or Dexter, or Saline), and I was going to have to drive my child either way, I would think differently about WiHi, or about the South Lyon Schools. In that case, I wouldn’t be comparing a school with transportation to a school without transportation. I would be comparing two schools without transportation – and the second school might be more convenient.

Unfortunately, this is an all-or-nothing decision. The district can’t choose a few areas (say, those with low-income housing) and only provide transportation there. The district stands to save $466,000 by cutting transportation. However, every student who doesn’t show up on count day, or who attends a different school, costs the district around $9,000 in the state’s per-pupil funding allowance. So if even 50 students were lost because of a decision to cut transportation, the district would lose all of the projected savings.

But I digress.

The crucial point is that cutting high school transportation will have a disparate impact on younger high school students. And because of the ways that income and race are so closely intertwined in today’s America, cutting transportation will certainly have a disparate impact on students of color and on poor students. Assessed in relation to the achievement gap, it is clear: If students can’t, or don’t, arrive at school, they are going to fall further behind.

Reading Intervention

Today, the district employs the equivalent of 10 reading intervention (RI) teachers in the Ann Arbor elementary schools – a half position at each elementary school. The current proposal is to cut that in half. RI teachers would be retained in just the schools “with the highest need.” This year, 460 students qualified for RI services.

Who were these students? Were they low-income? Were they students of color? The best indicator available to the district for a student’s household income is the qualification for free and reduced price lunch. I asked Liz Margolis, director of communications for AAPS, if the district identified students in the RI program by income or race. The answer is no. The district says it can’t share information about students in the Free and Reduced Price Lunch program – because it’s considered private. And the district doesn’t keep track of students in the RI program by race/ethnicity. If the district did track that information and share those aggregated numbers, it might yield a revelation that makes everyone uncomfortable.

It’s possible at least to make an educated guess. In 2007-2008, nearly half of the students who were identified as cognitively impaired were African-American – even though at the time just 16% of Ann Arbor students were African American. One of the key identifying statistics of the achievement gap is MEAP test scores, and if there is one thing that the MEAP is good at testing, it’s reading. On the 2010-2011 MEAP tests, for instance, 96% of the district’s white third graders achieved “proficient” status while 80% of African-American third graders, 84% of the Hispanic/Latino students, and 76% of “economically disadvantaged students” achieved “proficient” status. (You can find more data on the AAPS website.)

So we can be fairly confident – even though the district doesn’t officially track it – that cutting the Reading Intervention program, which serves the too-young-for-MEAP population of K-2 students, would have a disparate impact on students of color and low-income students. Of course, that prompts the question: Does the RI program work? If it doesn’t work, then it’s not helping to reduce the achievement gap, even if there are disparities in enrollment. But if it does work, then eliminating RI could diminish the district’s ability to address the achievement gap. Per student, RI is the most expensive program proposed for elimination (approximately $2,175/student). But, if the elimination of the program causes students to fall even further behind in reading, they could wind up qualifying for mandated special education services. And those costs would be far greater.

Seventh Hour

Another possible cut would affect seventh hour – the opportunity to take a seventh class during a semester, rather than the more standard six classes. One possibility is to cut the seventh hour option altogether. Another possibility is to convert seventh hour to a tuition-only option.

Cutting seventh hour completely would have different impacts at the district’s three comprehensive high schools. If seventh hour is completely cut at Pioneer and Huron high schools, then students could only take six credits (12 courses) a year. That has a couple of implications.

Currently, Skyline High School uses a trimester system, and there are five hours/trimester (5 x 3 = 15 classes or 7.5 credit hours), compared to seven hours/semester at the other schools (7 x 2 = 14 classes or 7.0 credit hours). They are not exactly comparable, because some classes that are taught in two semesters at Pioneer and Huron are taught in three trimesters at Skyline – for example, advanced placement (AP) classes and some math classes. And in practice, lots of students at Pioneer and Huron only take six classes, while most students at Skyline take five classes every term. But if seventh hour is cut, and Skyline stays with the trimester system, to maintain parity, should only four classes be offered per trimester (because 6 x 2 = 12 and 4 x 3 = 12)? Now that would affect a lot of people.

How many students take seventh hour? At any given time, it’s less than a quarter of the enrolled student body. But many students take a seventh hour only every second or third semester, so the impact would affect closer to half of the district’s students. Students who are most likely to take a seventh hour include: students who take orchestra, band, or choir; students who take a lot of AP classes; students who need to make up classes (credit recovery); and students in career/technical education. The Pioneer music department, for instance, estimates that 43% of the students in the music department take a seventh hour at least some of the time in order to get their necessary (non-music) credits.

I don’t have any idea how many students in the music program are African American or Hispanic/Latino. I don’t have any idea what percentage of students in the music program qualify for free and reduced price lunch. (The percentage of high school students who qualify for free/reduced price lunch in Ann Arbor is around 15%, much lower than in the middle and elementary schools. Families have to submit a separate application for each student, and in many cases the ones for older students are not submitted.) I don’t have any idea how many students would have difficulty actually earning enough credit hours in four years without seventh hour (and still be able to take music, or technical education). I don’t have any idea how many students are just barely above the free and reduced price lunch cutoff, but whose parents don’t have the disposable income to pay for a seventh hour. But the district probably does know, or could know.

I do know that if Skyline keeps a trimester system, then cutting the fifth hour would affect more students than cutting the seventh hour at Pioneer or Huron.

Cutting seventh hour compared to conversion to tuition could turn out to have quite different impacts, depending on how it’s handled. If seventh hour becomes a tuition-only option, should the fifth hour at Skyline be made tuition only? And if the district makes a seventh hour available with tuition only, would students who qualify for free and reduced price lunch have the fees waived? How would that affect the cost savings? Who would do the billing? What happens if parents say they’ll pay, but then don’t?

So is there a disparate impact to the proposals affecting seventh hour? Probably, but I can’t quantify it. What is interesting to me is that, if used correctly, seventh hour could potentially be a tool for reducing the achievement gap. I have talked to African-American parents and immigrant parents who have told me they believe that by keeping their children enrolled in music programs, their children have an opportunity to do better overall in school. That’s in part because being in orchestra or band affects your other scheduling options. And it makes it more likely that you will be scheduled with more serious students.

Conclusion

In the end, we do have budget cuts to make. It seems to me that high school transportation affects the largest number of students. It also has the greatest potential to create a disparate impact and undermine efforts to reduce the achievement gap.

If these are the wrong cuts, then we need to find other items to cut – at least until we can convince the state legislature to improve school funding. To my mind, avoiding any or all of these cuts might involve increasing district-wide class sizes just slightly by reducing general teaching numbers. I admit, that is a tough pill to swallow, but to me it is a better alternative than cutting high school transportation.

Ruth Kraut is an Ann Arbor resident and parent of three children who have all attended the Ann Arbor Public Schools. She writes at Ann Arbor Schools Musings (a2schoolsmuse.blogspot.com) about education issues in Ann Arbor, Washtenaw County, and Michigan.

The Chronicle relies in part on regular voluntary subscriptions to support our local reporting and columnists. Check out this link for details: Subscribe to The Chronicle. And if you’re already supporting us, please encourage your friends, neighbors and colleagues to help support The Chronicle, too!

David Erik Nelson

I spent the last two columns talking about what we should be teaching in our schools [1]. As we teeter on the brink of another school year, I want to take a second to talk about how to best teach these things. And, fair warning, my suggestion – as a former teacher and school administrator, not just a current chattering gadfly – is one you’ve already heard a thousand times: small class sizes.

But in the next twelve minutes I’m going to give you a way to argue for small class sizes in a patois that business folks can get behind.

As I’ve mentioned before, the vogue among conservative politicians – both at the state and national level – is to argue that their business acumen makes them uniquely well-suited to govern in our economically troubled times. I don’t reject this claim out of hand, because I agree that there are many business practices that adapt well to the public sector.

The problem, to my eye, is that the practices these erstwhile businessmen want to import to the public sector are largely from the management offices, rather than the sales floor.

Why Management Thinking Doesn’t Work in the Public Sector

As Nobel-prize winning economist Paul Krugman outlined brilliantly in a lil blog post at the beginning of this year, many of the techniques fundamental to making a business profitable make no sense when dealing in the public sector. Krugman’s post is short (certainly by Ann Arbor Chronicle standards; a pitiful 238 words!), but worth your read.

He highlights a tried-and-true technique for pumping up a flagging business: Concentrate profits while offloading costs. For example, fire half the workers at your candy factory, speed up the line, and keep pumping out roughly the same number of boxes (albeit at lower quality). As far as your balance sheet is concerned, profits have remained stable while costs have decreased; that’s good management! Of course, the workers bear the stress of the layoffs and the consumers bear the crappier quality, but those are “externalities”; they accrue off your books, and are “somebody else’s problem.” [2]

But governments – even at the local level – can’t really work this way, because all of a government’s customers are intimately entangled in its business. After all, a government’s customers make up the vast majority of its workers, as well as its bosses. If most of your customers are workers in your factory, then they know how badly quality has sunk, and they’re gonna want to stop buying. Meanwhile, if your bosses are stuck buying your crappy product and know it, they’re gonna fire your ass. Oops.

Boardrooms, Sales Floors, and Classrooms

That said, there are plenty of business lessons that are a perfect fit for our schools. What disappoints me is that when these CEO-politicians bring their “hard-won business smarts” to the schools, they bring everything but the things that actually made them successful businesspeople. They trot out “metrics” and “dashboards” and “maximized throughput” and “economies of scale” and “incentives” and “efficiency” – all the 50-cent biz-school jargon – without bringing the one piece of wisdom that every businessperson I’ve ever met knows in his or her heart:

Business is about relationships

Let’s talk about sales. I used to sell hiking boots. That was the last time anyone called me a “salesman” – but I’ve sold myself at every meeting, during every interview, with every handshake. I’m selling to you right now.

“Sales” is the word we use to dismiss “rhetoric” as beneath us, but rhetoric is the thing we – the magical talking chimps – use to Get Things Done.

Rhetoric – the brilliant, single-word slogan “Change” – got our first African-American president elected. We were sold on this man, and frankly, we’ve done okay [3]. Kennedy’s salesmanship put men on the moon. Jimmy Carter’s salesmanship has nearly eliminated the god-awful guinea worm. Sales built our railroads, sales bring down rates of teen pregnancy, sales of the M.A.D.D. and truth.org variety cratered dangerous teen drinking and smoking [4].

Sales hinge on relationships: We trust the salesperson, we believe he or she shares our interests and goals and dreams, and so we buy.

Always Be Closing

The most basic sell is “hand selling.” The salesperson and customer interact one-on-one, and the salesperson makes recommendations that are responsive to the customer’s needs. Any solvent shoe store owner can train just about any human of average social intelligence to hand sell. Think about asking someone on a date; that’s the hand sell at its foundation: “How are you doing today? Can I interest you in a handy me to have around your life?”

A step up is pitching to a group of, let’s say, a dozen or twenty folks. Not everyone is great at this, but almost everyone can learn to do it well enough. This is making a pitch to investors, arguing before a jury, playing an open mic night, giving a class presentation, reporting to a team of colleagues or board of directors.

The trick is that relationships really need to be formed person-by-person; this happens naturally when you’re speaking one-on-one, but is much more challenging when you’re talking one-to-many. That’s why we have all those chestnuts of public speaking: Make eye-contact with individuals, work the room, refer to audience members by name, touch people’s shoulders and elbows, etc. It’s tricky, but given thirty minutes, you can form a personal connection with twenty people as you make your pitch. It’s a learned skill, not a natural-born talent.

But once you cross that magical line from “small group” to “crowd,” there’s a major psychological shift. A “crowd,” after all, is just a single thrown beer bottle away from being a “mob.”

Not a lot of folks can wow a crowd. Realistically speaking, once you’ve got more than a small group – once you’re in the size of those big real estate and investment seminars – you can’t really sell anything, because you can’t form those personal relationships. The folks in those audiences aren’t being convinced to buy, they’re just being tipped over the edge, because they’d already sold themselves on the idea before they showed up.

You might notice these numbers I’ve picked out, and the sharp tacks already see where I’m going: Tutors and music teachers and coaches “hand sell.”

Teachers in normal schools basically need to be able to pitch a boardroom – traditionally, that is, when classes sizes were capped under two dozen.

Anything above that – like stadium-seating college lectures – requires either a pro-grade snake-oil salesman or substantial buy-in from the crowd before they even come through the door.

Kids in compulsory public schools often aren’t willing buyers; they need to be sold. And even Lee Iacocca couldn’t sell 40 reluctant buyers in a single group. That takes goddamn sales magic, and the only cats with that kind of voodoo are politicians and snake-oil gurus. And there isn’t a single such talent in this great nation who’s ever going to settle for $42,000 per year plus medical and a pension – not when his or her earning potential starts in the low six figures and only goes up, up, up.

The Problem With Our Schools

The problem with education in America – to the degree that there is a problem [5] – is that we’re putting fair-to-middlin’ sales staff into a nearly impossible sales situation. No shoe store owner in the world expects his or her staff to sell shoes forty pairs at a time; if there’s that many folks coming through the door, then they hire more sales staff. They don’t expect shoe buyers to sit in rows six deep and stare at the ceiling while someone yammers to them indiscriminately about chunky heels or high-performance cross-trainers, without regard for what kind of feet they have and what kinda walking they need to do.

My son’s kindergarten class had 23 students this year. That’s kind of a big room to work, but a competent public speaker can do it, and his teacher was just such a salesperson. Good for her. My wife’s high school classes in Redford are hovering in the mid-30s, with pressure to add more [6]. My wife is a brilliant human being with a masters in education and experience in tough schools with tough kids. She loves her subjects, expects a lot from her students, and takes no shit. But she isn’t Barack Obama or Steve Jobs or Oprah Winfrey, for chrissakes, and none of those folks ever dedicated their lives to a five-figure career with shrinking benefits.

So, that’s my pitch to you, Governor Snyder. Do you want to reform our schools with solid business practices? Then start by putting your frontline sales staff into sales situations where they can actually close deals instead of throwing them in front of a distractible mob and then acting shocked when they don’t make their numbers.

Of course, I’m a little loathe to put this notion in your head, sir, as I’m 90 percent sure that if you do read this, your only takeaway will be “Hey! Teachers are a lot like salesmen; we should make ‘em work on commission!”

Notes

[1] TL;DR: Compassion, mutual caretakership, lateral thinking, perseverance, humility.

[2] That might sound hollow, but bear in mind that in a world where you have to please banks – which is the world of all but the smallest businesses – looking good on paper is the entire game. Real world results have little bearing on decision making when those decisions must please the dark gods of corporate personhood served by the damned, scuttling minions inhabiting the cubicles of Comerica and Bank of America.

[3] Not super-awesome, but it’s a solid performance in terms of what we were promised. For what is clearly an apples-to-something-similar-to-but-clearly-not-an-apple comparison, check out the GOP Promise Meter. Incidentally, as a One Love kinda hippie, I consider most “compromises” to be solid wins. It’s a big tent, and I just want it to get bigger and bigger and bigger until we’re all mad-crazy group-hugging in the shade and singing “Give Peace a Chance.” Amen.

[4] On the dark side, a nation of freedom-minded Christians sold themselves the transatlantic slave trade. Nazi Germany sold Europe 11 million corpses, and sold them the ovens to go with them. Our last president sold us two futile wars.

[5] Americans have this “common sense” notion that our schools are terrible. That claim . . . I don’t even know where to start with that claim. Right on the face of it, the sentence “America’s schools are terrible” simply makes no sense.

First, there are no “American schools.” We don’t have a federal school system, we don’t even really have state-by-state schools; we have a school system of individual local districts of varying size, influence, resources, standards, practices, and goals. Aggregating data about those schools, looking at the final number, and saying “Christ, our school system is a wreck!” is tantamount to aggregating climatological data from across the country, looking at the final number, and concluding that it’s impossible to grow berries in the United States because, once you factor in the dearth of precipitation in Arizona and the overabundance of overcast days in Alaska, we’re just too dark and too dry for a strawberry to take hold here.

Beyond that, our school systems seek to do something that’s not quite unique, but nonetheless rare worldwide: We want to offer everyone a diverse, holistic education at the same level in a system that doesn’t break children off into vocational tracks and doesn’t throw anyone away.

Anyway, I’m not saying we don’t have problems; I’m saying that the answer to “Why aren’t our schools like Japan’s and Singapore’s?” is “Because we aren’t Japanese and this isn’t Singapore.”

[6] FYI, the maximum class-size advised by the United Nations is 35. Class sizes of up to 40 are far from unheard of in Detroit, even at the elementary level, and word on the street is that high schools might be looking at up to 61 students per class this fall. In other words, we’re steadily sliding toward the same place that rural India and Kenya are diligently working to climb out of. Hell, even Afghanistan – which has been besought by war (civil, holy, and otherwise) since 1979 – can keep their average down to 55 students per teacher. In other words, I’m not precisely sure we should call this latest round of “reforms” in Detroit Public Schools “progress.” For a nuanced perspective on class size, especially as it pertains to the developing world, give this 2007 report from USAID a read.

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John U. Bacon

Teachers in our country rarely get the respect they deserve – a uniquely American pathology. But this year they’ve endured not just indifference, but disrespect – and from Congressmen, no less.

Teachers are now blamed not just for falling test scores, but failing state budgets and rising healthcare costs.

There was once a politician who took a different view. In 1787, Thomas Jefferson’s Northwest Ordinance – what some scholars believe to be one of the three most important documents in the founding of America, along with the Constitution and Declaration of Independence – provided funding for public schools and universities. In it, he declared, “Religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.”

The idea is so central to American public education, the University of Michigan has it engraved on the façade of its central building, Angell Hall. But few of the people walking by Angell Hall even know the line is there, or why. Ignorance makes it easy to take what’s good for granted.

While Congress rewarded Wall Street’s “Masters of the Universe” with millions of taxpayer dollars after they ran the economy into the ground, the same politicians tell us the real economic villains are public school teachers, who educate our children for an average of $45,000 a year.

I don’t think George Orwell himself had the power to imagine such a twisted interpretation of reality.

The claim that teachers are under-worked, overpaid parasites could be made only by people who have never taught. I would be hard pressed to name any group that gives more and takes less from society than do teachers – who, after all, prepare us for what we’re going to do next. Even politicians.

Teaching is one of those jobs, like waiting tables or coaching sports, that everyone thinks is easy – until they try it. True, teaching is one of the easiest jobs to do poorly – but it’s one of the hardest to do well.

Part of this problem the teachers’ union brought on itself, by defending the worst teachers to the hilt, and not even allowing principals to watch their employees work without making an appointment months in advance. At my high school – Ann Arbor Huron High – one teacher set what I hope is a record by showing movies and film strips for 170 of the 180 school days.

But we also had college professors who decided teaching high school students was more important, and others who could have done anything they wanted – one of my English teachers had a law degree – but devoted their lives to teaching us.

And it wasn’t just out of noblesse oblige. When I was student teaching, I learned the job is not just demanding – it’s intellectually challenging.

But because the unions didn’t make the obvious reforms they should have made, now they’re at the mercy of overconfident, under-qualified politicians, who wouldn’t last a week in front of the classes I taught – let alone the inner city classrooms now packed with 35 students six hours a day, thanks to budget cuts.

I can still name almost every teacher and coach I’ve ever had – and I bet you can, too. But we’d have a hard time naming our last three Congressional representatives.

I learned about Jefferson’s Northwest Ordinance from Ed Klum in U.S. history, the same year I read Orwell’s “1984” in Jim George’s class. I learned how to write from Dave Stringer and Andrew Carrigan. And I learned critical thinking from all of them – which is why it’s not too hard for me to figure out what Jefferson would probably think of those teachers, and the politicians who bash them.

Which brings me to my final line, something public school teachers hear far too rarely: THANK YOU.

About the author: John U. Bacon lives in Ann Arbor and has written for Time, the Wall Street Journal, and ESPN Magazine, among others. He is the author of “Bo’s Lasting Lessons,” a New York Times and Wall Street Journal business bestseller, and “Third and Long: Three Years with Rich Rodriguez and the Michigan Wolverines,” due out this fall through FSG. Bacon teaches at Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism, and the University of Michigan, where the students awarded him the Golden Apple Award for 2009. This commentary originally aired on Michigan Radio.

An Ann Arbor summer tax bill, showing some of the assessments for Ann Arbor schools. For Ann Arbor Public Schools (AAPS), the millage rates reflect half the amount collected annually.

Among Michigan’s public educators, the 2010-11 fiscal year is being called “The Cliff.” Based on a grim downward trajectory of funding from the state, decreasing revenues from local property taxes and expenses like health care continuing to climb, that’s the year many districts are expected to plummet over the edge into the red.

Robert Allen, deputy superintendent of the Ann Arbor Public Schools, described this scenario at a sparsely attended forum last Thursday at Huron High School, where he and superintendent Todd Roberts made a pitch for voters to support a proposed countywide millage on the Nov. 3 ballot. They didn’t claim that AAPS would be among those districts falling off the cliff, but they did say their district faces a $15 million deficit that year. Without new revenue from the millage, they contend that the district would need to make dramatic cuts, and that those cuts would almost certainly affect students in the classroom. Michigan’s financial crisis is hitting hard, they say.

“As the state goes, so goes our funding,” Allen told the group on Thursday.

The state isn’t going so well.

But opponents argue that school districts haven’t done enough to cut costs, and that taxpayers can’t absorb the added burden of another millage. Beyond that, people on both sides say there’s an urgent need to reform the way schools are funded in Michigan, regardless of the success or failure of the Nov. 3 millage vote.

This Chronicle report looks at how Michigan funds K-12 public schools, why local school districts say they need a special enhancement millage and why critics say they don’t, and what that proposed millage would entail. Ann Arbor Public Schools is the largest of Washtenaw County’s 10 school districts, and would receive over a third of the $30 million collected from the millage annually – we’ll focus our coverage on that district.

Background: How Michigan Funds Public Schools

The state controls revenues for local school districts in two ways. First, it collects taxes directly from residential and non-residential property owners – 6 mills each, annually – and pools that money into the state’s School Aid Fund (SAF), which also includes revenues from sales and income taxes, state lottery revenue and other sources. Out of this fund, the state pays local school districts a per-pupil allotment – a variable amount set by the state legislature that can increase or decrease each year.

In addition, state law controls the amount of taxes that school districts can levy directly – those that are not pooled into the SAF. Beyond the 6 mills that go into the SAF, for example, there’s an additional tax on non-residential property owners, but the state caps that tax at 18 mills.

Both the funding from non-SAF local property taxes and from the total School Aid Fund are factored into an amount called the per-pupil “foundation allowance.” This amount varies by district – Ann Arbor’s per-pupil funding was originally expected to be $9,723 for the current fiscal year, which began July 1. With about 16,500 students in the Ann Arbor district, its per-pupil foundation allowance would be roughly $160.5 million – the bulk of the district’s projected $192 million budget for this fiscal year. (Other revenues come from the district’s share of a countywide special education millage and from federal grants.)

The current system stems from the 1994 passage of Proposal A. The goal of that ballot initiative was to create more equitable funding across all districts and to keep property taxes from escalating dramatically. Proposal A took away, to a significant degree, local control over school funding, though districts can still request voter approval to levy local millages for building construction, repairs, and maintenance. Ann Arbor has done that, most notably to fund the construction of Skyline High School.

Proposal A also created “hold-harmless” districts – Ann Arbor is one of only 44 districts statewide that are classified in this way. When Prop A took effect, these districts were receiving revenues higher than a $6,500 per-pupil base level set by the state at that time. Rather than have their funding lowered, the “hold harmless” districts were allowed to levy an additional millage to make up the gap. For Ann Arbor, that amount is $1,234 per pupil, or 4.42 mills. (The millage rate varies depending on property values, in order to generate a fixed amount of $1,234 per pupil.)

Another issue is this: As revenues from property taxes, sales taxes and other funding sources have decreased because of the state’s economy, the School Aid Fund has been shrinking. This year, the state is projecting a $1 billion deficit in the fund – that’s one reason why the legislature cut state funding for schools by $165 per pupil earlier this month. (The legislation authorizing that cut hasn’t yet been signed by Gov. Jennifer Granholm, however.) And depending on the amount of revenues coming into the School Aid Fund over the next few months, the state might make additional per-pupil cuts early next year.

The upshot? Districts can’t be sure exactly how much money they’ll receive from the state for their current fiscal year, which began July 1. For AAPS, the $165-per-pupil cut means a loss of about $2.7 million, bringing its per-pupil foundation allowance down to $9,558. The school board passed a balanced budget in June, which included tapping their fund balance (the district’s equivalent of a savings account) for nearly $2 million, to help resolve a $7.1 million deficit. But they’ll likely have to make additional cuts in light of the state’s decision to decrease per-pupil funding.

In the past, shortfalls in the School Aid Fund have been plugged by transferring revenues from the state’s general fund. But because the general fund has also faced staggering deficits, lawmakers have been using federal stimulus money in the past two years to shore up the School Aid Fund. Last year, AAPS got about $6 million in stimulus funds to cover what would have otherwise been a $365 per-pupil cut. The district has received another $3 million in stimulus dollars earmarked for special education, and about $1 million for Title 1 programs, which provide reduced and free lunches to low-income children.

Stimulus funds aren’t expected to be available beyond 2010-11, and the state still hasn’t determined how they’ll use those funds for schools in the current fiscal year.

What Ann Arbor Taxpayers Pay for Schools

In addition to the state school tax of 6 mills from residential property owners and 6 mills from owners of commercial and rental property, or of property that isn’t a taxpayer’s primary residence, there are four other school-related millages for the Ann Arbor district:

• 17.97 mills for operating funds – a “non-homestead” tax paid by owners of non-residential property.
• 4.4201 mills for the supplemental “hold harmless” tax.
• 2.0325 mills for debt repayment on school bonds.
• 0.9861 mill for a “sinking” fund, which can be used for school construction, renovations or repairs. The fund was initially approved, in part, to build the new Skyline High School.

Voters renewed the AAPS sinking fund, supplemental and non-homestead operating millages last year.

The Washtenaw Intermediate School District also collects two taxes countywide: 1) an operating millage of 0.0984 mill, and 2) a special education millage of 3.8761 mill.

In total, Ann Arbor homeowners pay just over 17 mills in school taxes. A mill equals $1 for every $1,000 in a property’s taxable value, which usually is considered roughly half of the market value. So owners of a home with a market value of $200,000 are paying about $1,700 annually in school taxes now, and would add another $200 to that if the millage on November’s ballot is passed.

In their public forum on the millage, AAPS school officials noted that since Proposal A passed in 1994, local taxpayers have seen their school millage rates fall. [Link to chart of school millages paid by Ann Arbor residents from 1994 to 2009.]

Brit Satchwell, second from the right, is president of the 1,200-member Ann Arbor Education Association, the teachers' union for the Ann Arbor Public Schools. He set up a booth at the Oct. 17 Ann Arbor Farmers Market, handing out yard signs and pins in support of the proposed countywide schools millage, and talking with residents about it. (Photo by the writer.)

How the Proposed Millage Would Work

Individual school districts are prohibited by state law from levying additional millages for operations. However, under the umbrella of the Washtenaw Intermediate School District – an entity set up in the early 1960s to provide services to all 10 public school districts in the county – an operating millage can be levied and distributed equally, with each district receiving the same per-pupil amount.

The Nov. 3 ballot proposal calls for collecting 2 mill countywide each year for five years, starting in 2010. The millage is projected to raise $30 million annually, to be divided among the 10 districts. The WISD would not receive funding from this millage, nor would any percentage of the millage go to the state.

Here’s what voters will see on the ballot:

PROPOSAL I

REGIONAL ENHANCEMENT MILLAGE PROPOSAL

Pursuant to state law, the revenue raised by the proposed millage will be collected by the intermediate school district and distributed to local public school districts based on pupil membership count.

Shall the limitation on the amount of taxes which may be assessed against all property in Washtenaw Intermediate School District, Michigan, be increased by 2 mills ($2.00 on each $1,000 of taxable valuation) for a period of 5 years, 2009 to 2013, inclusive, to provide operating funds to enhance other state and local funding for local school district operating purposes; the estimate of the revenue the intermediate school district will collect if the millage is approved and levied in 2009 is approximately $30,000,000?

Each district in the county is projected to receive the following amount annually, based on the number of students in their districts:

• Ann Arbor: $11,209,169
• Chelsea: $1,805,447
• Dexter: $2,477,564
• Lincoln: $3,261,427
• Manchester: $865,953
• Milan: $1,778,896
• Saline: $3,748,612
• Whitmore Lake: $841,030
• Willow Run: $1,358,160
• Ypsilanti: $2,663,743

In lobbying for the millage, Glenn Nelson – an AAPS school board member – notes that many taxpayers will be eligible for a state property tax credit and a federal property tax deduction, offsetting a portion of the increase in taxes. Countywide, he calculates that the millage will only cost taxpayers $21.2 million annually, because of the available credit and deduction, while generating $30 million for schools. That calculation assumes that all taxpayers eligible for the credit and deduction actually file for it.

Why Districts Say They Need This Millage

In making the case for an additional millage, school officials acknowledge that it’s a difficult economic climate for residents, and a tough time to be asking for a new tax. They also say they have no alternative.

All districts contend that they’ve already been cutting expenses and consolidating services, as revenues from the state have fallen. Ann Arbor Public Schools has cut $16 million from its budget over the past four years, according to administrators. Those moves included eliminating 66 jobs, restructuring the district’s middle school program to save $2.3 million annually, increasing class sizes, and cutting back on custodial services, among other things.

Officials also point to countywide efforts, including those coordinated by the Washtenaw Intermediate School District. [.PDF link to list of consolidated school services in Washtenaw County]

But costs continue to escalate while revenues fall, they say – even with the millage, AAPS expects to face a $4 million deficit in 2010-11.

Todd Roberts, superintendent of Ann Arbor Public Schools, at an Oct. 15 forum on the proposed countywide schools millage. (Photo by the writer.)

Personnel costs

The biggest portion of any district’s operating budget is personnel. At the AAPS millage forum on Thursday, Robert Allen, AAPS deputy superintendent, noted that 85% of the district’s operating budget goes toward personnel costs – salaries and benefits – and that a $15 million budget shortfall equated to about 220 jobs.

The Ann Arbor Education Association – the teachers union, and the largest of the district’s nine bargaining units – has already made some concessions, earlier this fall agreeing to a salary freeze for the first time in its history for the 2009-10 school year. The new contract contained changes in health care benefits too, including an increase in prescription co-pays for teachers, but also a 15% increase in the amount that the district pays for a teacher’s health insurance, to $12,582. And so-called step increases – automatic pay raises that teachers receive each year for their first 12 years of service – remain in place.

At Thursday’s forum, one of the people attending asked superintendent Todd Roberts how he’d respond to those who think teacher salaries are too high. Roberts defended the salaries that AAPS pays, saying that “our teachers are not anywhere near the top” compared to other districts statewide. What’s more, he said, the district needs to pay a decent wage in order to attract and retain high-quality teachers.

Pay is linked to education and time of service. The average AAPS teacher’s salary is about $72,000. First-year teachers with a bachelor’s degree earn $39,540 – the top of the pay scale for teachers with a bachelor’s degree is $66,975. Teachers with masters degrees start at $44,539 and top out at $79,899. Beginning teachers with a Ph.D. earn $49,919 – the top of the scale for them is $87,774.

Maintaining a quality education

The need to keep the quality of Ann Arbor’s public education high – and the role of the proposed millage in doing that – is an argument made by school officials and others who support the millage.

Steve Norton, a leader of the Ann Arbor Citizens Millage Committee, which supports the millage, told The Chronicle that there are two choices: Bring in additional revenues through the millage, or dismantle the school system as we know it. An additional investment now, he said, will buy time for public school advocates to lobby for substantive changes at the state level. It’s a millage they might not need long-term, Norton said, but if they don’t get the funding now, the district will suffer.

School officials give a range of actions that would be necessary if they’re forced to slice $15 million from next year’s budget. Layoffs would be necessary, meaning that with fewer teachers, class sizes would increase. High schools would likely cut their 7th hour of classes, and “enhancement” programs like art, music and sports could be at risk.

In stating that the quality of Ann Arbor’s public schools is threatened, Norton, Roberts and others make an economic development argument as well. Education is a pillar of the local economy, Roberts said, pointing to its inclusion in the Ann Arbor Region Success initiative, a countywide strategic planning effort of business and community leaders. From that group’s report:

High quality education systems (from early childhood through post-secondary) are needed to develop skilled workers and attract companies and talent thinking of moving to our region. Companies thinking of expanding or relocating to our region need to know that their children can get the best education possible whether they live in our villages or urban core. This is one of the key factors that site selectors assess when recommending sites for expansion and relocation. High school graduation rates are good in most areas of the county but we need to consistently achieve high attainment levels in all school districts. [.PDF file of entire report.]

Karen Cross, a current former AAPS school board member, told The Chronicle that when people hear what’s at stake, they’re generally receptive to the millage. But that’s not always the case.

An anti-millage sign on East Huron River Drive earlier this year near the home of Ted Annis, a member of the Citizens for Responsible School Spending, which opposes the millage. (Photo by the writer.)

What Opponents Say

Critics of the millage proposal make two main arguments: 1) Districts haven’t made sufficient structural changes to lower their expenses, and 2) residents are in no position to absorb additional taxes in the current economic climate. The 17 mills that residents of Ann Arbor already pay should be sufficient, they say.

In Ann Arbor, some opponents also criticize the “redistribution of wealth” aspect of the millage. Because of how the money is collected and redistributed, Ann Arbor taxpayers will be paying more than will be returned to the Ann Arbor school district. That’s true: AAPS will only receive an estimated $11 million from the enhancement millage, though taxes from the district will generate about $16 million. The $5 million that’s not returned to AAPS will go to other districts in Washenaw County. (AAPS is already a “donor” district for the School Aid Fund, with local taxpayers paying more than the district receives back in state aid.)

Several groups have organized to defeat the millage, but taking the lead is the Citizens for Responsible School Spending, spearheaded by former AAPS board member Kathy Griswold and Ted Annis, a technology entrepreneur who’s on the board of the Ann Arbor Transportation Authority.

“Fear-mongering”

Speaking to The Chronicle just before a meeting of CRSS on Sunday afternoon, Griswold characterizes the rhetoric of millage advocates as misleading and fear-mongering, likening it to the tactics that former president George W. Bush used to drum up support for the war in Iraq. She says the per-pupil amounts are misleading, too, and that per-pupil funding for AAPS is much higher – over $12,000 per pupil, not the $9,723 figure that’s quoted by the district. She calculates that amount by taking the district’s most recent audited financials (from the 2007-08 fiscal year) with general fund revenues of $192 million, dividing that by the number of students in the district, and adding another $1,500 per pupil from revenues of the sinking fund and bond millages. [Link to AAPS financial reports]

Kathy Griswold, foreground, attended an Oct. 15 millage forum at Huron High School's Little Theater. She is a former AAPS school board member and a leader of the Citizens for Responsible School Spending, which opposes the millage. (Photo by the writer.)

Griswold says that though the district has cut costs, the overall operating budget isn’t decreasing – the cuts merely mean that the budget is staying flat or increasing less than it otherwise would, she says.

Griswold also takes issue with the approach that public school officials take in pitching the millage to the public. There’s been a strong effort to get the vote out in Ann Arbor, she said, with the implication being that if Ann Arbor voters weigh in heavily in favor of the millage, then it won’t matter if it’s defeated by voters in the rest of the county. If a majority of the total votes approve the millage, every taxpayer will be assessed – even if it was defeated in their district. “That seems like taxation without representation,” she said.

The Washtenaw County Republican Executive Committee also is opposing the millage, and announced the decision on its website: “While the Committee was unanimously supportive of education, they felt the struggling homeowners and businesses in our difficult economy do not need an additional burden. Following a presentation and a question and answer period with the Superintendents from the Ann Arbor, Chelsea and Saline school districts, the Committee felt that cost cutting measures that the districts had not implemented and were still available were the better approach.”

Getting the Word Out

Citizens for Responsible Spending is planning a community forum sometime this week . They’re also providing the research they’ve done to several other anti-millage groups, including the Citizens for a Responsible Washtenaw, backed by McKinley CEO Albert Berriz. That group is expected to send a mailing to all Ann Arbor residents who’ve requested absentee ballots.

AAPS has already mailed informational brochures to 37,000 residents in the district, outlining details of the millage. The Ann Arbor Citizens Millage Committee sent a mailing, too, funded by private donors and explicitly advocating for the millage. Todd Roberts and Robert Allen held a forum last Thursday, and are holding another one tonight at Pioneer High School’s Little Theater, starting at 7 p.m. And representatives from the Ann Arbor Citizens Millage Committee have been speaking at PTO meetings and other gatherings in the district for the past several weeks.

Citing advocacy for the millage in schools, Citizens for Responsible Spending has raised the issue of possible Michigan Campaign Finance Act violations on the part of the Ann Arbor schools, a charge that Todd Roberts dismisses. In an email to Roberts and Norm Herbert, co-chair of the Ann Arbor Citizens Millage Committee, Annis and Griswold cite concerns over the use of school property for advocacy of the millage, and of advocacy in the AAPS brochure mailed to residents. Roberts told The Chronicle that the AAPS mailing was informational only, and that while other school officials are prohibited from using school resources to advocate for the millage, it is within his right as superintendent to do so. Griswold said that her group is still looking into the issue.

Advocates on both sides are meeting with the editorial board of AnnArbor.com, which plans to take a position on the millage. The editorial board – anchored by AnnArbor.com CEO Matt Kraner, executive vice president Laurel Champion and Tony Dearing, chief content officer – has been expanded to include some community members. McKinley’s Albert Berriz is a member of the board, but has recused himself from this issue, according to Dearing.

What’s Next?

Many districts are grappling with a financial crisis, even before the year of “The Cliff.” In Washtenaw County, Willow Run and Ypsilanti school districts are operating under a deficit – by law, those districts are required to file deficit elimination plans with the state, outlining how they plan to resolve the situation. Willow Run has been running a deficit for years; Ypsilanti had a $3.7 million deficit in its current budget, and the district has until Dec. 15 to submit a deficit elimination plan. [.PDF link to list of all Michigan school districts that filed a deficit elimination plan for fiscal 2008]

The numbers aren’t yet in on how many districts statewide are currently running a deficit, but there will be more, said David Martell, executive director of the Michigan School Business Officials, a Lansing-based group.

Tackling the problem is difficult, Martell said, because school administrators don’t have authority to make unilateral decisions about spending. If superintendents could make across-the-board cuts on the expense side, “then we wouldn’t be having these discussions,” he said. Multiple factors prevent that from happening, he added, including the authority of community-elected boards that are ultimately responsible for making tough budget decisions, but whose members might not be willing to take the political heat.

Many school officials and others point to the state as the primary cause of the current financial crisis in public education, and the main target for reform. Steve Norton of the Ann Arbor Citizens Millage Committee suggested that implementing a graduated income tax or expanding the sales tax to include the service sector would bring in new revenues to support public schools and, more broadly, to help address Michigan’s own structural deficit.

Roberts cited retirement costs – managed by the Michigan Public School Employees’ Retirement System – as being a critical personnel issue that needs to be addressed, and one that local districts don’t control. The state sets the rate that districts must pay to cover retirement costs for its employees, and it’s not a sustainable system, he said. [Link to an April 2009 Education Report article about the impact of retirement costs on Michigan's public school districts.]

Term limits for legislators are another huge obstacle to addressing reform at the state level, advocates of public education say, but they believe the current crisis will prompt change – if only because there’s no other choice.

“This really is a tipping point,” Norton said.

Links to Millage-Related Information

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Some of the groups against the proposed millage

• Citizens for Responsible School Spending
• Coalition for Taxpayer Relief [Link to campaign finance filing]
• Washtenaw County Taxpayers Association

Some groups supporting the millage

• Ann Arbor Citizens Millage Committee [Link to campaign finance filing]
• Ann Arbor Public Schools Educational Foundation
• Friends of Education [Link to campaign finance filing]
• Washtenaw Intermediate School District

From the schools

Some of the county’s 10 districts have posted information regarding the millage on their websites (most of the other districts link to the WISD site):

Ann Arbor Public Schools

Chelsea School District

Lincoln Consolidated Schools

Whitmore Lake Public Schools

Ypsilanti Public Schools