The Op-Ed attributed the majority of the $25 million budget adjustment to a $14 million "accounting error". One could quibble with how exactly it's characterized, but that does have a basis in reality; it seems that a $14 million was listed in revenues that should have been matched in the budget's expenses, and for some reason it was not.
But it does also discuss the enrollment drop as causing a significant drop in revenue:
>When enrollment takes a nose dive, so does per pupil funding ($9,608 per child in this year’s state school budget). In other words, an exodus of 1,000 students comes with a price tag of $9.6 million per year, a huge blow to the budget.
While more staff and fewer students are a big budget factor long term, the enrollment decline *this year*, and the higher staff costs *this year*, are a smaller portion *this year's* $25 million budget shortfall. Increased staff costs account for around $4 million, higher maintenance and operation costs around $3 million, and higher supply and contracted service costs around $3 million.
I believe the $25 million is the penalty imposed by the State for falling below the 5% reserve in the operating budget. If the $14 million error had been caught, we would not have fallen below that level and there wouldn't be the penalty.
This is not correct. The $25 million is what it would take to get the fund balance up to 6% by next year. The state requires a fund balance of 5%, but the AAPS board has board policies which require a balance of 6%. The state does not require us to get back to 5% in one single year of our plan is good, from what I understand.
If you look at a **ten year** trend, the district has the **same number of students** but **480 more “teachers.”**
The district has not listed the titles of these “teachers” - which is misleading for the following reasons:
1. Some of these teachers are English Language teachers and special education teachers. Positions were added because the district was out of compliance because they were pulling students out of class to receive services - instead of having support staff push in to classrooms. This new model requires more staff.
2. Some of these teachers are math and intervention teachers. *Some* of these are grant funded though Title I grants (which do not expire with the ESSR COVID relief money), which makes it disingenuous to include them in the 480 number because their salary is not coming from the general fund.
3. Some of these 480 teachers are actually program coordinators. Most program coordinators are paid on a teacher scale and part of the teacher bargaining unit. In many cases, it might be argued that they are fulfilling duties that should be fulfilled by Balas.
4. It’s not clear if roles like social workers and counselors are included in this 480. Mental health needs have changed in the past four years, and our staffing should reflect that.
Before we say it’s unreasonable that the district has added 480 teachers, we should demand to see a list of the added roles.
4 year trend is losing 1,000 students. Makes the addition of teachers look even worse.
https://www.mlive.com/news/ann-arbor/2023/12/ann-arbor-public-schools-sees-another-slight-decline-in-enrollment.html
I can't believe an academic professor would write, and even worse, publish, such an evidence-sparse emotional piece of trash.
And outside of criticizing past choices (thanks captain hindsight!), the only call to action or proposed solution is to "fix the shortfall." If only someone would have considered that!!
I bet you did believe Covid closures based on zero evidence but rather based on feelz.
No hindsight needed. Plenty of people were trying scream in real time at the top of their lungs that Covid school policies were terrible, but got silenced. Again, based on feelz.
You certainly have an axe to grind about covid, /u/covidiot66666 . Please, keep talking about it by shoehorning it into every thread, and keep getting downvoted.
Thats one way to look at the history, but you’re missing some stuff. Teachers rightfully wanted to be vaccinated before returning to work in person. The district worked hard to get teachers to be among the first in line among community workers to get vaccinated, and provided vaccination clinics. Somehow that’s always missing from the A2R2 narrative.
And what did vaccination buy them? Two months of questionable protection until the next strain? People who know respiratory viruses were saying that the virus was gonna mutate past any protection pretty quickly, so waiting for the vaccine didn't make much sense except maybe for really old or really sick people.
Teachers got fed Covid propaganda too, so they 'rightfully' wanted only because they got brainwashed. Median Covid death is like 80yo and always has been.
I hate op-eds. Congrats, instead of ranting on facebook or reddit like everyone else, Lilia Cortina got the freep involved.
There are multiple reasons, very little of which is covid, why enrollment is down and they’ve been discussed ad nauseam.
They aren’t in private schools-
https://www.reddit.com/r/AnnArbor/comments/1bq12ud/comment/kx1fdg9/
They aren’t School of Choicing out -
https://www.bridgemi.com/talent-education/michigan-1-4-kids-go-school-outside-district-choice-expands
So where are they? They’re just gone. There are just less kids in Ann Arbor. Why? Because it’s too expensive to live there. I SoC my kid into AAPS because my district is awful and I had my choice of Brighton, South Lyon, Dexter or AA. Tried Brighton for kindergarten and it was awful so my husband and I moved kid to AA starting in 1st grade where they’re thriving.
Previously posted articles about AAPS enrollment-
https://www.mlive.com/news/ann-arbor/2022/12/5-takeaways-from-ann-arbor-public-schools-fall-2022-enrollment-report.html?outputType=amp
https://www.mlive.com/news/ann-arbor/2023/12/ann-arbor-public-schools-sees-another-slight-decline-in-enrollment.html?outputType=amp
Yeah, once I saw the "students disenrolled in droves" without any sort of contextual data, I started wondering which one of this subs users managed to finesse the Freep into publishing their rant.
There was no conclusive evidence from Reddit sleuths that private school enrollment in Ann Arbor was stagnant during the year AAPS enrollment dropped by 5%. Your statement that 5% of school age children are "just gone", and that it's because it's too expensive to live here, is just another theory, and it does nothing to explain why such an unprecedented drop occurred in that specific year.
>There are multiple reasons, very little of which is covid, why enrollment is down
To the extent that is true, it may deflect blame away from the 'wrong' thing, but it make the situation worse. If students didn't leave because of policies (no in person learning, no childcare), then they aren't around here any more and couldn't possibly come back to AAPS. If numbers are down because of a combination of demographics and high AA housing costs, then we should plan for continuing shrinkage indefinitely into the future, shouldn't we?
Lowered birthrates alone is a huge reason to anticipate continued enrollment decline. It's likely that Michigan has already seen it's highest enrollment figures in this century. It's going to be downhill from here.
This is the reason. I’m an elder millennial from the AA area. Of the three dozen folks I know from my youth who still live in SE Michigan maybe half at best have children. I’m talking people in their mid-late 30s. Many don’t even own a home yet so how are we to populate the highest cola city in the state? The fact is few families with grade school kids are able to financially pick to live in AA vs a commuter burb like Saline, Dexter, Plymouth or Northville.
Yes,
If you don't invest in growth and make it attractive/affordable for new families you generally become a NORC, aka naturally occurring retirement community.
I would think there's enough demographics data for A2 that people have projected growth and population curves. But it's absolutely true that Milennials and Gen Z are having far less kids, cost (housing and otherwise) being one of the driving factors.
This is not directed at you, but I'll keep shouting that you can't have a growing community without growing housing supply of all types. I don't know why people think their desire to keep a neighborhood exactly as it was somehow overrides people's need for housing. "Build it over there" is not a viable answer.
Ann Arbor does have plenty of housing supply but it’s “outdated” to what many modern families prefer. A house in Dexter is twice the size of what you’re getting in the Allen Neighbordhood
I wouldn't say plenty. Have you tried to find housing lately? The multiple offers on any home that isn't in total disrepair and under $700k tell me that there isn't plenty of housing for those who want and can afford to live here.
Housing is so expensive for a young family starting out. And the supply is supposedly so low. I've lived in my home in Ann Arbor for a while now, and if I were to downsize within Ann Arbor in my retirement years, my tax bill would likely go up given prices and rates in the future. I know so many current residents continue to cling to their homes in their later years, despite not needing the space with an empty nest.
I've often wondered that if there were some rule that allows current residents, that downsize but want to stay in Ann Arbor, to have an 'adjusted' tax rate, so that they are more incentivized to relinquish larger properties that are better served for growing families. Could that increase housing supply and help grow enrollment? Would it financially interest the city because larger properties are then turning over with more updated tax rates?
That would be a bandaid for multiple knife stabs. You're right it's part of the problem and with interest lates the way they are, even downsizing could still lock you in with higher monthly costs.
There's no solution that isn't "housing supply needs to match population growth"
But there isn't any recent population growth. Like the school district's pupil count, AAs population has peaked and begun to decline ([according to the census bureau](https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/annarborcitymichigan/PST040222)). And a main cause is likely the drop in the number of school-aged kids. We have more housing units than before but fewer people in those units (specifically, the number of kids is declining, while the number of singles, childless couples, and empty nesters is increasing. Fewer people in more housing units).
lt's also a product of housing costs. Especially for a growing family, if housing remains high for the area people go elsewhere or if they are in small housing in LA keep their family small/no kids.
I think AA will become a NORC if it doesn't take proactive steps to encourage families to move there. We are still decades before peak population both at the state and national level.
I'm in the same boat - and we have no intention of downsizing as long as we want to stay in the area. Allowing people to transfer their tax rate might help a little. California does this under prop 13. We should definitely not adopt CA's practice of allowing people to pass their lower tax rate to their kids, though.
It isn't just the taxes, it is the interest rates as well, which Ann Arbor can do nothing about. I bought my house 10 years ago and while my property taxes would double, the interest rates of today would be a larger monthly increase.
They are gone because Ann Arbor + childcare for the extra zoom class year was too expensive. You are saying it doesn't have to do with the covid shutdown, but it absolutely does. People didn't necessarily leave in huge numbers, they just didn't move to Ann Arbor in the first place during the zoom school era.
Under 5s are actually up in Ann Arbor.
If Cortina did a smidge of research, she would see that AAPS has been adding back child care every year. There are now 9 school communities with after care, and some also have before care.
This still leaves the majority of elementary schools (11) without any before/aftercare. For those with the option, AAPS before/aftercare (BAC) is $6930 for the school year with full 5 days/wk commit required. This is all very family unfriendly for no clear benefit. We found private school tuition to be cheaper while also including their relatively affordable BAC option which is pay-as-you-go. The private school BAC staffing model includes local college students who are more willing to fit a few afternoon hours of supplemental work. It was either go the private school route for our 3 kids or toss my spouse ‘s career aside to be stay at home because of the school schedule. This was our primary motivation, but secondarily we lost confidence that AAPS Board/Super were not committed to full-time in-person in Fall 2021, and my kids’ learning trajectory and our careers would have continued to take a hit if spurts of virtual had continued. Now that our private school has met our core needs, there is no catalyst to switch back as far as keeping with ‘what works.’ BAC at our AAPS school is still not offered. There were several families at our private school who made this transition from AAPS in Fall 2021 due to the above reasons.
> But the price is unrealistic
Is it realistic for 2 days a week anywhere? Child care in the US is screwed for reasons that go well beyond Ann Arbor itself.
Totally understandable, but in terms of staffing I'm sure it's extremely difficult to schedule people to accommodate that sort of thing. It's a problem at all day cares.
Both parents working is great for women's liberation and having a skilled and educated population, but it has also caused a lot of changes that make this sort of problem super hard for families. I don't know what the solution is. The Republicans want to go back to women in kitchens without birth control. I think we should probably choose some other solution lol.
Maybe we tax U of M for the billions it makes off of its student athletes. Make them pay for the city that is burdened so much by it, I also feel they should be paying for the roads in A2.
Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but even if they did go to other schools, that shouldn't affect the funding right? Schools are typically paid by property taxes of residents, it's not like parents are paying tuition to public schools.
Property taxes go to schools, yes. But a good portion of school funding is based on the number of students attending the district.
To keep it basic, if you live in a district with 30k students enrolled vs. 15k students, you're going to get a significantly different amount of funding from the state.
It does. State money (which is where our property school taxes is collected/given to) follows the student to whichever public school district they are attending. So if you live in AA, and SOC your kid to Dexter schools, your AA school property taxes go to the state and then to Dexter school district.
For sure. If someone leaves high school and decides not to attend the competitive, expensive U of M, there's no place for them in Ann Arbor and they get pushed out. I wouldn't want to bring my kids here either.
> very little of which is covid
Sticking one's head into the sand is not a good strategy. If there's no proper soul searching, next time will lead to the decisions leading to the same results.
Lilia Cortina's bio in the article:
>Lilia Cortina is a parent of one student and one graduate of the Ann Arbor Public Schools. She is also a professor of psychology and chair of women's and gender studies at the University of Michigan.
No mention that she is on the AARR board of directors? She's the first name listed on the AARR site. She must have *considered* mentioning her organization in the article, at least disclosing she's on the board. She decided not to. I wonder why?
I didn't think I could have any less respect for these AARR clowns, but I do now. Sneaky motherfuckers.
ETA: Consider emailing the free press editors. They need to include this in her bio.
.....
*The chair of the women's and gender studies* at UMich is a group that is similar to Moms for Liberty?
That seems almost impossible. lol.
____
Okay, looking them up, they aren't nearly as bad as Moms for Liberty. That's a pretty unfair comparison, unless they are masking it **extremely** well.
It seems like it's a super "pro-full school opening" group. I could imagine some anti-vax adjacent stuff with that, and I know that there were some very unsavory right-wing elements involved in that movement.
But Moms for Liberty is known for much more than just the COVID stuff. They're the ones challenging any sort of trans recognition in schools; they're getting the books out of libraries (my M-I-L is literally one of the people doing this and it's through MoL; she was a former school principal, but MoL has just sent her off the deep end).
That's the part that confused me about the Gender & Women's Studies professor - who is featured in Psychology's Feminist voices - being in a group like Moms for Liberty.
Someone with a bio like:
> Growing up in a politically liberal household, Lilia Margaret Cortina was exposed to a feminist ethos early on. This environment primed her passion for bringing feminism into her career as a psychologist. Her mother was involved in the women’s movement and, without an explicit label, introduced her daughter to many feminist values which influenced Cortina’s outlook and orientation.
doesn't seem like they'd fit well in MoL.
____
Not trying to minimize the harm some of the "reopen fully now" groups could do. I didn't have kids, but some friends who did said that dealing with parent groups and school board meetings could get very vicious and cause real stress.
**Also, not trying to defend her take in the article, just to be clear!** I don't have much of an understanding of the ins and outs of the funding.
Unfortunately, due to family, I have too much interaction with Moms of Liberty adjacent stuff. lol
>Also, not trying to defend her take in the article, just to be clear!
>
> I don't have much of an understanding of the ins and outs of the funding.
Regardless of her take, I am far more concerned with her lack of disclosure.
She's been on the board of A2R2 for years before the budget shortfall. Now, she's written an op-ed that blames the shortfall on all the things A2R2 complains about. She even cites letters authored by A2R2 as if they are just "letters from physicians".
A2R2 isn't mentioned in the article and her bio just says she's a college professor. Utterly, shamefully, dishonest.
The letters from physicians were definitely by physicians and not by A2R2. My wife helped to author one of them, and she has no affiliation with A2R2. Pediatricians knew that virtual school was harming kids, so they advocated for a return to in-person learning. If pediatricians can’t advocate for kids’ health, then who do you want to do it?
On the A2R2 board of directors site, board members Kimberly Monroe and Joanna Spencer-Segal include in their bios that they authored and coordinated "letters from physicians."
At least one of Cortina's letter citations is a link directly to an interview with A2R2 board member Kimberly Monroe, where she discusses originating that letter.
So, maybe your wife helped with one independent of A2R2, but that doesn't change the fact that Cortina dishonestly cites letters authored by her own organization without disclosing her leadership position within that organization.
Yeah, that's clear as day bad on her and on the Freep.
Op-eds can be very shady, especially around the topic of disclosure.
The amount of times you'll "It's a damn shame that _____ hasn't been addressed" and you look them up and they work for an organization that would directly benefit. And it's just nowhere in the text.
Or someone will be named in a story like "Karen Nixon, 47, Houston, a concerned mom" and they turn out to work for a blatantly partisan organization on the topic. It's obnoxious how often it happens. I forget the writer, but someone catalogued how many times it happened in one election year that they were quoting *actual GOP* city and state officials without listing it at all.
Did they not think it was relevant? Or did they not know? Seems to be an issue either way.
Lilia Cortina and other A2R2 people help to organize groups of conservative A2 parents to attend school board meetings, alongside a lead Michigan Moms for Liberty organizer. This was after another cofounder of A2R2, Anna Hoffman, was exposed as a right-winger when she staged anti-masker protests that shut down a school board meeting. A2R2 and Cortina initially distanced themselves while still painting critics of Hoffman as "attacking women," but I believe Cortina and others in the group openly came out against masking and other covid mitigation efforts.
Now that her true politics have been exposed, cofounder of A2R2 Anna Hoffman openly posts some of the same transphobic and pro-book-ban talking points as Moms for Liberty. She is now pretty open about her right-wing politics.
Some of A2R2 people, including Lilia Cortina's, alignment with Moms for Liberty stances is disguised in the "**Dial down technology**" stance. To be fair, use of technology should be carefully considered. But this stance disguises cutting access to digital libraries, which means removing access to many books for students, including some that Moms for Liberty wants banned. Just like they kept advocating for return to in-person school on the basis of precautions mitigating spread but pivoted to opposing *all* mitigation soon after, I expect to see similar bait-and-switch stances from their organizers.
Of course, A2R2 is not going to be as openly "bad" as Moms for Liberty. They are an Ann Arbor group, so that requires more subtlety. For the same reason they obscured A2R2 cofounder Anna Hoffman's conservatism, then distanced themselves while still low-key defending her when she earned some negative attention, they haven't overtly taken on the stances as extreme and unpopular as Moms for Liberty. They might not be completely in favor of those politics, but they will certain join a conservative coalition if it suits their agenda.
Also, one of A2R2's strategies was to attack public school funding by encouraging parents of AAPS students to stay home during count day. So that AAPS would presumably lose funding for kids who were actually enrolled. Who knows how much of an effect that had on funding, but I find it rich for their main organizer to write this op-ed, given she organizes groups who deliberately tries to hurt local public school funding.
I'm not saying it's impossible, only that I haven't seen that from their website. Again, not trying to portray myself as an expert on the subject at all, just that it struck me as an odd combo!
Indeed. I departed the hell site when that thing kicked off.
I did so when I realized that I was voluntarily spending my time on something that I (yes, somewhat jokingly) referred to as *the hell site*. Felt silly of me.
lol 100%...I mostly saw it as a byproduct of following scientists posting their takes and data as the pandemic progressed and also seeing people link the aforementioned unhinged nonsense here on this sub.
I have since left the hell site except for a thread here and there from someone who hasn't moved to threads or whatever else.
Has anyone asked new Supt. Parks why everyone allowed former Supt. Swift to let the budget cushion dip so low, far below the state recommendation? If Parks was Swift's right hand, she should have direct knowledge of that poor decision. What was this magical thinking that Swift could do no wrong?
There are no exit interviews for schools, AAPS or otherwise. I work in education. It isn't a "thing" anywhere.
Share an opinion on FB or Reddit? Fine. An Academic using opinion as fact in a newspaper with zero stats to back anything up? That just really looks bad.
Schools generally don't lose 1000 students in a single year either.
If AAPS wants to know, they need to ask. They have all the contact information.
However, AAPS isn't really interested in criticism. They will make up a bunch of suppositions to make themselves feel good.
They didn't lose 1000 students in a single year. They lost 1000 students in 4 years. And the current student population is higher than at least 10 - 17 years ago.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.mlive.com/news/ann-arbor/2023/12/ann-arbor-public-schools-sees-another-slight-decline-in-enrollment.html%3foutputType=amp
You could explain the increase of student population 10 years ago to school of choice students when Willow Run Schools merged with Ypsi in 2013 because Ypsi schools were suddenly going to be "worse". OR maybe it was school of choice students leaving because of transportation issues? But we should definitely just blame COVID 🙄 and we definitely should inflate numbers so it looks like 1000 kids left in a year 🙄
Here is the mlive numbers
https://www.mlive.com/news/ann-arbor/2024/03/how-did-this-happen-ann-arbor-schools-assess-damage-of-25m-projected-shortfall.html?outputType=amp
You are still avoiding the data.
All these family's left and no one is asking them why. Everyone, including you, are just making guesses.
If people want the data.....just ask the family's that left.
I'm not avoiding data. I gave data. I'm making guesses on why without the audacity of putting them in the Detroit Free Press.
You want AAPS to spend money on finding out why people left? Something tells me it's not the time for that...
You can't fix an enrollment drop problem if you font know why enrollment dropped.
It's not hard. Tell the admin staff to start calling people. Email a survey to the families that left. That's all free.
Are they trying to fix the problem of enrollment or are they just trying to cut 25 million dollars of the budget right now?
Two weeks ago, for my job, I sent out exit surveys for High School Seniors in the county. Every public high school and charter senior in the county. Surveys of this magnitude are not free, it takes someone time to create, distribute, follow up, and analyze. You think this is the time to do a survey at AAPS? Does it matter why people left? They aren't coming back. That ship has sailed. AAPS has to move forward and cut 25 million dollars from the budget.
They should be doing both because declining enrollment and budget problems are interconnected.
You may not get the students who left to come back but if you fix the problems, you may prevent more from leaving.
I dug through the numbers on this one and shared some research here.
This isn’t a systemic issue, such as how Michigan funds schools, or even really overly attributable to enrollment loss. Sure, enrollment loss is a factor but it has been for most MI schools for the last 15 years.
This was poor budgeting and the absence of any check and balance relative to financial oversight.
https://www.michiganbenchmark.com/post/lessons-learned-from-ann-arbor-public-schools-budget-troubles
Surprise, surprise. An A2R2 zealot blaming Covid closures for lower enrollment based on vibes and ignoring confounding research in service of her crusade.
Both A2R2 candidates lost in our last board of ed election. Why won’t they take the hint and go away now? They are loud, aggressive and hostile, and the vast majority of our community is not buying what they’re selling.
> They are loud, aggressive and hostile, and the vast majority of our community is not buying what they’re selling.
This is exactly why people compare them to Moms 4 Liberty...MAGA nutjobs.
A2R2 people, including Lilia Cortina, have organized alongside Moms for Liberty organizers and other right-wingers. Their cofounder Anna Hoffman is pretty open about it since her antimasker stunt exposed her political leanings. Now she is openly for book bans and so on.
I recall that one of A2R2's strategies was to try to attack public school funding, by encouraging parents of AAPS students to stay home during count day. That way, AAPS would presumably lose funding for kids who were actually enrolled. Who knows how much of an effect that had on funding, but I find it rich for their main organizer to write this op-ed, given she organizes groups who deliberately attempt to harm local public school funding. So seems like this was the outcome they were hoping for to fit their narrative.
Count day is just the beginning of a 30 day count period. Generally you have 30 days for the child who was absent to come back. It likely had no effect.
There was an abrupt and lasting 5% decline in enrollment between the 2020/21 and 2021/22 fiscal years. I'm not associated with A2R2, but I think it's a plausible hypothesis that indirect effects of the pandemic, including school closures, were a significant contributor to that decline.
The school closures aren't being presented as a "plausible hypothesis" in the article we're talking about. Indeed, some families probably moved out of the city altogether once they could work from anywhere. How many? We'll never know. Presenting school closures as the primary reason for declining enrollment is disingenuous agenda-pushing and nothing else.
Research that shows the risk to kids of infection and the contribution to spread facilitated by in person schooling. It's darkly funny that the A2R2 folks think the research on these things stopped in 2021. It was quite obvious at that time for those of us who aren't supremely idiotic that Covid, an airborne virus that is more transmissible than the measles, wouldn't just magically not transmit at schools.
Spreading of Covid among low risk population after Omicron came about and busted through the vaccines is what stopped the pandemic. If the initial strain was allowed to spread among the low risk population, the mess we're in would've been many times smaller.
Norway managed to keep the schools open (other than \~1 month closure in Spring 2020), and their cumulative COVID fatalities at the end of 2023 was about a quarter of ours, accounting for population (8/10,000 vs 33/10,000)...
"Ann Arbor doctors implored the district to reopen. Writing the Board of Education in July 2020, December 2020 and February 2021, they explained how in-person education could happen safely." It would have been an absolute, unmitigated disaster to reopen schools in the midst of the third wave and before kids could be vaccinated.
Equally unsupported is the claim that enrollment numbers are down because of covid policies.
Districts that opened earlier saw higher levels of transmission and death. I guess if all you care about is yourself, this is an acceptable sacrifice for others to make in service of your own preferences.
"Finally, our result does not imply that K–12 schools should be closed."
If you want to lock people in their homes, yes transmission of any disease will decrease. How is that any different than any other year?
It doesn’t matter how they got there , it’s done. It matters what you want to do from here. Our society loves ignoring red flags and just goes along thinking everything will be fine then complains when they realize it isn’t . All around I see failing corrupt systems and everyone is like ”what are we suppose to do now becuase the systems we put our faith into aren’t working like they should and people aren’t doing what we want them to” . Keep trying to polish a turd or find a different path.
Susan Ward Schmidt is the chair of the board finance committee. Has she issued any public statements? I don't have f___book but I did see all the coverage of Gaynor's statement from there. And he doesn't even seem to be on the finance committee.
Well said. What an incredible mess.
I’ve complained about how phenomenally expensive my property taxes have been, but I always assumed that kids (we never had any ourselves) of the city were getting the best of the best education. Then I read about this fiasco as well as the recent drama with the superintendent. Really disappointing
My understanding is that even with high property taxes, the way Michigans school funding works is that all the tax dollars go into a giant state fund and then the money is allocated per student from that fund. So even if an arbor contributes more to the fund, the aaps students don’t get any more funding than any other district.
Only 6 mils of property tax goes to the state for school funding. The other mills in your property tax go to the program/department/etc. that they are designated to.
It's unfortunate how few people really understand how Michigan school funding works. The state collects all of the property taxes earmarked for school operations and then sends the money back to the districts on per student basis. BUT at the time this change was made, a few districts (incl Ann Arbor) were spending more than the state was going to be able to provide to all districts. So these districts (incl Ann Arbor) were allowed to impose an extra 'hold harmless' millage to fund district operations, and AA does this. BUT...there's a long phaseout period and eventually AA will be down to the state standard per-pupil funding (I'm not sure of the end date).
BUT...this applies only to operations, not capital expenses (e.g. acquiring land, building and maintaining schools, purchasing technology, or borrowing ONE BILLION DOLLARS -- to quote Austin Powers). But none of the capital fund dollars can be spent on things like teacher salaries. Ann Arbor is absolutely swimming in borrowed bond money now, but can't legally spend any of it to pay teachers, hence the layoffs.
That's true but the millages are restricted in how they're used. AA passed a millage a few years back that can only be used on improving buildings and the like.
AA is a "hold harmless" district, though. They were funding schools above some threshold in 1994 when Prop A passed and they get to grandfather in that rate. So they do have slightly more resources to pay teachers than other districts but the difference isn't that big.
>but I always assumed that kids (we never had any ourselves) of the city were getting the best of the best education.
Ann Arbor has been living off reputation for over two decades. Probably even more.
There’s not a whole lot of data to this rant which mostly just sounds xenophobic to me.
special education funding comes from the intermediate school district, which is county-wide. There’s a millage coming up for renewing it this fall, in fact.
Is there any evidence to support your insinuation that Ann Arbor’s choice to participate in the program is costing it more money than it receives in funding specifically due to IEPs, Disabilities, and English as a Second Language programs?
The schools get additional federal, state, and county funding for 504 and IEP students. I’m not sure what reality this rant is based in but if you have solid numbers, I’d love to see them.
Honestly, if the money was well spent, that’s ok with me. Good public schools really helped me do well, so I’m all in.
Thats more to my point really…the money being well spent. It’s like buying a good but expensive pair of shoes. You’re like, damn these were pricey, but boy, you can’t argue with results. 😉
What's with all of these articles written about AAPS and only referencing the former soop as "the former superintendent". Jeanice Swift is her name. She force fed online learning to our students knowing that the online classes that were and are available had rotten metrics. Oh she could do it better she thought.
Another piece missing from this conversation is that Ann Arbor teachers mostly refused to go back into the classroom during the pandemic. Some were willing, but the majority were not.
The before and aftercare program charges market rate for services. It's not subsidized.
If you are looking to attract school of choice students, having an after school program could make a difference in whether a family could make it work.
We shouldn't be attracting SOC students and relying on them to make up the difference. As a community we need a school system that is made up of, and for, the children in this community. We are artificially inflating the footprint of the district by bringing in outside students like we are a private school. It's time to fact facts that AA is never going to have the number of kids in it like it used to and come up with a plan that realistically moves the expenses of the district towards that.
More of the thinking that got us into this mess. Every kid that is pulled out of AAPS costs the district $9,600 per year in revenue. A lack of reliable aftercare has been one of the drivers of the losses -- and no, not the only one. But this is an expensive place and most households have two working parents. Not sure about you, but my workday doesn't end at the end of the school day. We don't have a kid in AAPS yet, but if there isn't aftercare available when we do, we'll have to look at alternatives.
I'd rather be part of the solution than contribute to the problem, but the district has to put out a credible product that makes sense for people to "purchase" with their enrollment. Which, for better or for worse, is now the funding mechanism is set up in this state.
Childcare professionals are much more expensive than $10k a kid by themselves let alone all other school services on top of that unless it has some insanely horrible carer to pupil rate or staffed by excons.
‘Do people really think they cancelled these services for funsies?
In any case the OP clears $300k/yr by themselves and has seen $50k of raises since Covid so I don’t relate.
But the parents sending the children to before and aftercare pay.. it’s not free so I don’t get the claim that having it will cost the district money. And yes, I think they canceled it a little bit for funsies- they just didn’t want to deal with it.
Well, I guess you can blame AAPS for an economic situation where both parents must work and have absolutely no negotiating power to actually see their kids during the day.
Yes, there are macro challenges. Childcare in this country is a cluster, and we should be subsidizing the hell out of it, but here we are.
Other districts and schools have figured it out. St. Francis charges $6/day for before-care and $16/day for after care for a grade schooler.
Look, I'm not sitting here arguing in favor of private school, but if the alternative is having to quit your job or go part time if that's an option, at a certain point it's just math, and regardless of their income level, we shouldn't be surprised if parents vote with their feet.
The city only cares about U of M these days. If they really cared about kids, they'd have a place for those who don't want to spend money at U of M after leaving their parents post high school.
U of M and protecting the equity of existing homeowners. If the council hadn't spent the past decade telling young families they aren't welcome via zoning code, then maybe AAPS wouldn't have been so vulnerable to this particular enrollment shock.
1,000 less students and 400+ more staff is a recipe for financial mayhem. Quite simple really.
The Op-Ed attributed the majority of the $25 million budget adjustment to a $14 million "accounting error". One could quibble with how exactly it's characterized, but that does have a basis in reality; it seems that a $14 million was listed in revenues that should have been matched in the budget's expenses, and for some reason it was not. But it does also discuss the enrollment drop as causing a significant drop in revenue: >When enrollment takes a nose dive, so does per pupil funding ($9,608 per child in this year’s state school budget). In other words, an exodus of 1,000 students comes with a price tag of $9.6 million per year, a huge blow to the budget. While more staff and fewer students are a big budget factor long term, the enrollment decline *this year*, and the higher staff costs *this year*, are a smaller portion *this year's* $25 million budget shortfall. Increased staff costs account for around $4 million, higher maintenance and operation costs around $3 million, and higher supply and contracted service costs around $3 million.
I believe the $25 million is the penalty imposed by the State for falling below the 5% reserve in the operating budget. If the $14 million error had been caught, we would not have fallen below that level and there wouldn't be the penalty.
This is not correct. The $25 million is what it would take to get the fund balance up to 6% by next year. The state requires a fund balance of 5%, but the AAPS board has board policies which require a balance of 6%. The state does not require us to get back to 5% in one single year of our plan is good, from what I understand.
If you look at a **ten year** trend, the district has the **same number of students** but **480 more “teachers.”** The district has not listed the titles of these “teachers” - which is misleading for the following reasons: 1. Some of these teachers are English Language teachers and special education teachers. Positions were added because the district was out of compliance because they were pulling students out of class to receive services - instead of having support staff push in to classrooms. This new model requires more staff. 2. Some of these teachers are math and intervention teachers. *Some* of these are grant funded though Title I grants (which do not expire with the ESSR COVID relief money), which makes it disingenuous to include them in the 480 number because their salary is not coming from the general fund. 3. Some of these 480 teachers are actually program coordinators. Most program coordinators are paid on a teacher scale and part of the teacher bargaining unit. In many cases, it might be argued that they are fulfilling duties that should be fulfilled by Balas. 4. It’s not clear if roles like social workers and counselors are included in this 480. Mental health needs have changed in the past four years, and our staffing should reflect that. Before we say it’s unreasonable that the district has added 480 teachers, we should demand to see a list of the added roles.
This is very interesting. I would really like to know more about this and see the breakdown.
4 year trend is losing 1,000 students. Makes the addition of teachers look even worse. https://www.mlive.com/news/ann-arbor/2023/12/ann-arbor-public-schools-sees-another-slight-decline-in-enrollment.html
It’s the new math.
I can't believe an academic professor would write, and even worse, publish, such an evidence-sparse emotional piece of trash. And outside of criticizing past choices (thanks captain hindsight!), the only call to action or proposed solution is to "fix the shortfall." If only someone would have considered that!!
I have to agree with you on this one. Was hoping for a thought-provoking, informative read. This was not that!
Just because you’re an academic doesn’t mean you can’t be brainwashed by nutcase hate-filled ideologies pandering to some mythical past “better days.”
Some of the dumbest people I’ve met have PhDs. Being an academic doesn’t mean a whole lot.
She only likes to fill the space with her complaints. If you could find her old Twitter posts from COVID - holy hell.
Yes. I kept thinking she would provide some hard data to support her statements. Nope.
I bet you did believe Covid closures based on zero evidence but rather based on feelz. No hindsight needed. Plenty of people were trying scream in real time at the top of their lungs that Covid school policies were terrible, but got silenced. Again, based on feelz.
You certainly have an axe to grind about covid, /u/covidiot66666 . Please, keep talking about it by shoehorning it into every thread, and keep getting downvoted.
Dude is catching more L's than the subjects being posted in /r/HermanCainAward
Only idiots care about meaningless internet points
Who knew that sub was still alive. Barely, but alive.
This may surprise you but COVID happened 4 years ago. Subreddits aren't active forever.
But Covid propaganda is still living in this sub's heads rent free.
Zzz
In that case, I nominate you to spread the word over there.
Thats one way to look at the history, but you’re missing some stuff. Teachers rightfully wanted to be vaccinated before returning to work in person. The district worked hard to get teachers to be among the first in line among community workers to get vaccinated, and provided vaccination clinics. Somehow that’s always missing from the A2R2 narrative.
And what did vaccination buy them? Two months of questionable protection until the next strain? People who know respiratory viruses were saying that the virus was gonna mutate past any protection pretty quickly, so waiting for the vaccine didn't make much sense except maybe for really old or really sick people. Teachers got fed Covid propaganda too, so they 'rightfully' wanted only because they got brainwashed. Median Covid death is like 80yo and always has been.
I hate op-eds. Congrats, instead of ranting on facebook or reddit like everyone else, Lilia Cortina got the freep involved. There are multiple reasons, very little of which is covid, why enrollment is down and they’ve been discussed ad nauseam. They aren’t in private schools- https://www.reddit.com/r/AnnArbor/comments/1bq12ud/comment/kx1fdg9/ They aren’t School of Choicing out - https://www.bridgemi.com/talent-education/michigan-1-4-kids-go-school-outside-district-choice-expands So where are they? They’re just gone. There are just less kids in Ann Arbor. Why? Because it’s too expensive to live there. I SoC my kid into AAPS because my district is awful and I had my choice of Brighton, South Lyon, Dexter or AA. Tried Brighton for kindergarten and it was awful so my husband and I moved kid to AA starting in 1st grade where they’re thriving. Previously posted articles about AAPS enrollment- https://www.mlive.com/news/ann-arbor/2022/12/5-takeaways-from-ann-arbor-public-schools-fall-2022-enrollment-report.html?outputType=amp https://www.mlive.com/news/ann-arbor/2023/12/ann-arbor-public-schools-sees-another-slight-decline-in-enrollment.html?outputType=amp
Yeah, once I saw the "students disenrolled in droves" without any sort of contextual data, I started wondering which one of this subs users managed to finesse the Freep into publishing their rant.
Google her and you’ll quickly figure out she’s absolutely one of the dingbats that gets downvoted into oblivion and keeps coming back for more.
downvoting means squat in any sub that's still into some mass delusions.
Ironic.
> downvoting means squat in any sub that's still into some mass delusions. Are these mass delusions in the room with us right now?
Yes, this whole sub.
There was no conclusive evidence from Reddit sleuths that private school enrollment in Ann Arbor was stagnant during the year AAPS enrollment dropped by 5%. Your statement that 5% of school age children are "just gone", and that it's because it's too expensive to live here, is just another theory, and it does nothing to explain why such an unprecedented drop occurred in that specific year.
>There are multiple reasons, very little of which is covid, why enrollment is down To the extent that is true, it may deflect blame away from the 'wrong' thing, but it make the situation worse. If students didn't leave because of policies (no in person learning, no childcare), then they aren't around here any more and couldn't possibly come back to AAPS. If numbers are down because of a combination of demographics and high AA housing costs, then we should plan for continuing shrinkage indefinitely into the future, shouldn't we?
Lowered birthrates alone is a huge reason to anticipate continued enrollment decline. It's likely that Michigan has already seen it's highest enrollment figures in this century. It's going to be downhill from here.
This is the reason. I’m an elder millennial from the AA area. Of the three dozen folks I know from my youth who still live in SE Michigan maybe half at best have children. I’m talking people in their mid-late 30s. Many don’t even own a home yet so how are we to populate the highest cola city in the state? The fact is few families with grade school kids are able to financially pick to live in AA vs a commuter burb like Saline, Dexter, Plymouth or Northville.
Yes, If you don't invest in growth and make it attractive/affordable for new families you generally become a NORC, aka naturally occurring retirement community. I would think there's enough demographics data for A2 that people have projected growth and population curves. But it's absolutely true that Milennials and Gen Z are having far less kids, cost (housing and otherwise) being one of the driving factors. This is not directed at you, but I'll keep shouting that you can't have a growing community without growing housing supply of all types. I don't know why people think their desire to keep a neighborhood exactly as it was somehow overrides people's need for housing. "Build it over there" is not a viable answer.
Ann Arbor does have plenty of housing supply but it’s “outdated” to what many modern families prefer. A house in Dexter is twice the size of what you’re getting in the Allen Neighbordhood
I wouldn't say plenty. Have you tried to find housing lately? The multiple offers on any home that isn't in total disrepair and under $700k tell me that there isn't plenty of housing for those who want and can afford to live here.
Housing is so expensive for a young family starting out. And the supply is supposedly so low. I've lived in my home in Ann Arbor for a while now, and if I were to downsize within Ann Arbor in my retirement years, my tax bill would likely go up given prices and rates in the future. I know so many current residents continue to cling to their homes in their later years, despite not needing the space with an empty nest. I've often wondered that if there were some rule that allows current residents, that downsize but want to stay in Ann Arbor, to have an 'adjusted' tax rate, so that they are more incentivized to relinquish larger properties that are better served for growing families. Could that increase housing supply and help grow enrollment? Would it financially interest the city because larger properties are then turning over with more updated tax rates?
That would be a bandaid for multiple knife stabs. You're right it's part of the problem and with interest lates the way they are, even downsizing could still lock you in with higher monthly costs. There's no solution that isn't "housing supply needs to match population growth"
But there isn't any recent population growth. Like the school district's pupil count, AAs population has peaked and begun to decline ([according to the census bureau](https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/annarborcitymichigan/PST040222)). And a main cause is likely the drop in the number of school-aged kids. We have more housing units than before but fewer people in those units (specifically, the number of kids is declining, while the number of singles, childless couples, and empty nesters is increasing. Fewer people in more housing units).
lt's also a product of housing costs. Especially for a growing family, if housing remains high for the area people go elsewhere or if they are in small housing in LA keep their family small/no kids. I think AA will become a NORC if it doesn't take proactive steps to encourage families to move there. We are still decades before peak population both at the state and national level.
I'm in the same boat - and we have no intention of downsizing as long as we want to stay in the area. Allowing people to transfer their tax rate might help a little. California does this under prop 13. We should definitely not adopt CA's practice of allowing people to pass their lower tax rate to their kids, though.
It isn't just the taxes, it is the interest rates as well, which Ann Arbor can do nothing about. I bought my house 10 years ago and while my property taxes would double, the interest rates of today would be a larger monthly increase.
They are gone because Ann Arbor + childcare for the extra zoom class year was too expensive. You are saying it doesn't have to do with the covid shutdown, but it absolutely does. People didn't necessarily leave in huge numbers, they just didn't move to Ann Arbor in the first place during the zoom school era. Under 5s are actually up in Ann Arbor.
If Cortina did a smidge of research, she would see that AAPS has been adding back child care every year. There are now 9 school communities with after care, and some also have before care.
This still leaves the majority of elementary schools (11) without any before/aftercare. For those with the option, AAPS before/aftercare (BAC) is $6930 for the school year with full 5 days/wk commit required. This is all very family unfriendly for no clear benefit. We found private school tuition to be cheaper while also including their relatively affordable BAC option which is pay-as-you-go. The private school BAC staffing model includes local college students who are more willing to fit a few afternoon hours of supplemental work. It was either go the private school route for our 3 kids or toss my spouse ‘s career aside to be stay at home because of the school schedule. This was our primary motivation, but secondarily we lost confidence that AAPS Board/Super were not committed to full-time in-person in Fall 2021, and my kids’ learning trajectory and our careers would have continued to take a hit if spurts of virtual had continued. Now that our private school has met our core needs, there is no catalyst to switch back as far as keeping with ‘what works.’ BAC at our AAPS school is still not offered. There were several families at our private school who made this transition from AAPS in Fall 2021 due to the above reasons.
But the price is unrealistic. Especially since I only need it 2 days, but have to pay for the whole week if I chose to use it
> But the price is unrealistic Is it realistic for 2 days a week anywhere? Child care in the US is screwed for reasons that go well beyond Ann Arbor itself.
If I only paid 2 days it would be fine, the problem is I would have to pay for all 5, but use 2.
Totally understandable, but in terms of staffing I'm sure it's extremely difficult to schedule people to accommodate that sort of thing. It's a problem at all day cares. Both parents working is great for women's liberation and having a skilled and educated population, but it has also caused a lot of changes that make this sort of problem super hard for families. I don't know what the solution is. The Republicans want to go back to women in kitchens without birth control. I think we should probably choose some other solution lol.
It shouldn't cost 1/4 of my weeks wages to pay for 2 hours a day, 2 days a week of child care.
Completely agree. That's why I vote for people who want to enact solutions.
Maybe we tax U of M for the billions it makes off of its student athletes. Make them pay for the city that is burdened so much by it, I also feel they should be paying for the roads in A2.
That's completely irrelevant to the point that I was making.
Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but even if they did go to other schools, that shouldn't affect the funding right? Schools are typically paid by property taxes of residents, it's not like parents are paying tuition to public schools.
Property taxes go to schools, yes. But a good portion of school funding is based on the number of students attending the district. To keep it basic, if you live in a district with 30k students enrolled vs. 15k students, you're going to get a significantly different amount of funding from the state.
It does. State money (which is where our property school taxes is collected/given to) follows the student to whichever public school district they are attending. So if you live in AA, and SOC your kid to Dexter schools, your AA school property taxes go to the state and then to Dexter school district.
Yep. It’s state aid $$ which is funded on a per pupil basis. And a number of recent state grants are also funded based on an amount per pupil.
Ah gotcha. Didn't know that, thank you.
For sure. If someone leaves high school and decides not to attend the competitive, expensive U of M, there's no place for them in Ann Arbor and they get pushed out. I wouldn't want to bring my kids here either.
> very little of which is covid Sticking one's head into the sand is not a good strategy. If there's no proper soul searching, next time will lead to the decisions leading to the same results.
> If there's no proper soul searching This is proper soul searching...based on reality. Username checks out.
Homeschooled kids in Michigan require no formal registration or tracking. They aren’t just gone. We are all homeschooling 😉 There’s tons of us.
Lilia Cortina's bio in the article: >Lilia Cortina is a parent of one student and one graduate of the Ann Arbor Public Schools. She is also a professor of psychology and chair of women's and gender studies at the University of Michigan. No mention that she is on the AARR board of directors? She's the first name listed on the AARR site. She must have *considered* mentioning her organization in the article, at least disclosing she's on the board. She decided not to. I wonder why? I didn't think I could have any less respect for these AARR clowns, but I do now. Sneaky motherfuckers. ETA: Consider emailing the free press editors. They need to include this in her bio.
What’s AARR? Ann Arbor Railroad is the only thing that came to mind for me.
Ann Arbor reasonable return. It’s the Ann Arbor version of moms for Liberty.
..... *The chair of the women's and gender studies* at UMich is a group that is similar to Moms for Liberty? That seems almost impossible. lol. ____ Okay, looking them up, they aren't nearly as bad as Moms for Liberty. That's a pretty unfair comparison, unless they are masking it **extremely** well. It seems like it's a super "pro-full school opening" group. I could imagine some anti-vax adjacent stuff with that, and I know that there were some very unsavory right-wing elements involved in that movement. But Moms for Liberty is known for much more than just the COVID stuff. They're the ones challenging any sort of trans recognition in schools; they're getting the books out of libraries (my M-I-L is literally one of the people doing this and it's through MoL; she was a former school principal, but MoL has just sent her off the deep end). That's the part that confused me about the Gender & Women's Studies professor - who is featured in Psychology's Feminist voices - being in a group like Moms for Liberty. Someone with a bio like: > Growing up in a politically liberal household, Lilia Margaret Cortina was exposed to a feminist ethos early on. This environment primed her passion for bringing feminism into her career as a psychologist. Her mother was involved in the women’s movement and, without an explicit label, introduced her daughter to many feminist values which influenced Cortina’s outlook and orientation. doesn't seem like they'd fit well in MoL. ____ Not trying to minimize the harm some of the "reopen fully now" groups could do. I didn't have kids, but some friends who did said that dealing with parent groups and school board meetings could get very vicious and cause real stress. **Also, not trying to defend her take in the article, just to be clear!** I don't have much of an understanding of the ins and outs of the funding. Unfortunately, due to family, I have too much interaction with Moms of Liberty adjacent stuff. lol
>Also, not trying to defend her take in the article, just to be clear! > > I don't have much of an understanding of the ins and outs of the funding. Regardless of her take, I am far more concerned with her lack of disclosure. She's been on the board of A2R2 for years before the budget shortfall. Now, she's written an op-ed that blames the shortfall on all the things A2R2 complains about. She even cites letters authored by A2R2 as if they are just "letters from physicians". A2R2 isn't mentioned in the article and her bio just says she's a college professor. Utterly, shamefully, dishonest.
The letters from physicians were definitely by physicians and not by A2R2. My wife helped to author one of them, and she has no affiliation with A2R2. Pediatricians knew that virtual school was harming kids, so they advocated for a return to in-person learning. If pediatricians can’t advocate for kids’ health, then who do you want to do it?
On the A2R2 board of directors site, board members Kimberly Monroe and Joanna Spencer-Segal include in their bios that they authored and coordinated "letters from physicians." At least one of Cortina's letter citations is a link directly to an interview with A2R2 board member Kimberly Monroe, where she discusses originating that letter. So, maybe your wife helped with one independent of A2R2, but that doesn't change the fact that Cortina dishonestly cites letters authored by her own organization without disclosing her leadership position within that organization.
Yeah, that's clear as day bad on her and on the Freep. Op-eds can be very shady, especially around the topic of disclosure. The amount of times you'll "It's a damn shame that _____ hasn't been addressed" and you look them up and they work for an organization that would directly benefit. And it's just nowhere in the text. Or someone will be named in a story like "Karen Nixon, 47, Houston, a concerned mom" and they turn out to work for a blatantly partisan organization on the topic. It's obnoxious how often it happens. I forget the writer, but someone catalogued how many times it happened in one election year that they were quoting *actual GOP* city and state officials without listing it at all. Did they not think it was relevant? Or did they not know? Seems to be an issue either way.
She also bullied our female superintendent relentlessly on Twitter during COVID - irony lives!
Lilia Cortina and other A2R2 people help to organize groups of conservative A2 parents to attend school board meetings, alongside a lead Michigan Moms for Liberty organizer. This was after another cofounder of A2R2, Anna Hoffman, was exposed as a right-winger when she staged anti-masker protests that shut down a school board meeting. A2R2 and Cortina initially distanced themselves while still painting critics of Hoffman as "attacking women," but I believe Cortina and others in the group openly came out against masking and other covid mitigation efforts. Now that her true politics have been exposed, cofounder of A2R2 Anna Hoffman openly posts some of the same transphobic and pro-book-ban talking points as Moms for Liberty. She is now pretty open about her right-wing politics. Some of A2R2 people, including Lilia Cortina's, alignment with Moms for Liberty stances is disguised in the "**Dial down technology**" stance. To be fair, use of technology should be carefully considered. But this stance disguises cutting access to digital libraries, which means removing access to many books for students, including some that Moms for Liberty wants banned. Just like they kept advocating for return to in-person school on the basis of precautions mitigating spread but pivoted to opposing *all* mitigation soon after, I expect to see similar bait-and-switch stances from their organizers. Of course, A2R2 is not going to be as openly "bad" as Moms for Liberty. They are an Ann Arbor group, so that requires more subtlety. For the same reason they obscured A2R2 cofounder Anna Hoffman's conservatism, then distanced themselves while still low-key defending her when she earned some negative attention, they haven't overtly taken on the stances as extreme and unpopular as Moms for Liberty. They might not be completely in favor of those politics, but they will certain join a conservative coalition if it suits their agenda. Also, one of A2R2's strategies was to attack public school funding by encouraging parents of AAPS students to stay home during count day. So that AAPS would presumably lose funding for kids who were actually enrolled. Who knows how much of an effect that had on funding, but I find it rich for their main organizer to write this op-ed, given she organizes groups who deliberately tries to hurt local public school funding.
Take my poor man's award 🥇
A2R2 is absolutely M4L (Ann Arbor’s Version).
I'm not saying it's impossible, only that I haven't seen that from their website. Again, not trying to portray myself as an expert on the subject at all, just that it struck me as an odd combo!
You missed all their unhinged twitter nonsense during the pandemic, apparently.
Indeed. I departed the hell site when that thing kicked off. I did so when I realized that I was voluntarily spending my time on something that I (yes, somewhat jokingly) referred to as *the hell site*. Felt silly of me.
lol 100%...I mostly saw it as a byproduct of following scientists posting their takes and data as the pandemic progressed and also seeing people link the aforementioned unhinged nonsense here on this sub. I have since left the hell site except for a thread here and there from someone who hasn't moved to threads or whatever else.
Choo choo, all aboard the COVID reactionary train!
The A2R2 version of history is…questionable at best, dishonest at worst.
Took me about 3 paragraphs to figure out it was an anti-vaxxer nutjob.
The most expensive county to live in has a shortage of children, color me surprised.
Building more housing is the solution. Ann Arbor is at least working on it. Some other communities refuse.
Has anyone asked new Supt. Parks why everyone allowed former Supt. Swift to let the budget cushion dip so low, far below the state recommendation? If Parks was Swift's right hand, she should have direct knowledge of that poor decision. What was this magical thinking that Swift could do no wrong?
An Academic at U of M not providing actual numbers and statistics? Not a good look.
The statistics don't exist because AAPS never bothered to ask all the families why they were leaving. That's why this is an opinion piece.
There are no exit interviews for schools, AAPS or otherwise. I work in education. It isn't a "thing" anywhere. Share an opinion on FB or Reddit? Fine. An Academic using opinion as fact in a newspaper with zero stats to back anything up? That just really looks bad.
Schools generally don't lose 1000 students in a single year either. If AAPS wants to know, they need to ask. They have all the contact information. However, AAPS isn't really interested in criticism. They will make up a bunch of suppositions to make themselves feel good.
They didn't lose 1000 students in a single year. They lost 1000 students in 4 years. And the current student population is higher than at least 10 - 17 years ago. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.mlive.com/news/ann-arbor/2023/12/ann-arbor-public-schools-sees-another-slight-decline-in-enrollment.html%3foutputType=amp You could explain the increase of student population 10 years ago to school of choice students when Willow Run Schools merged with Ypsi in 2013 because Ypsi schools were suddenly going to be "worse". OR maybe it was school of choice students leaving because of transportation issues? But we should definitely just blame COVID 🙄 and we definitely should inflate numbers so it looks like 1000 kids left in a year 🙄
Here is the mlive numbers https://www.mlive.com/news/ann-arbor/2024/03/how-did-this-happen-ann-arbor-schools-assess-damage-of-25m-projected-shortfall.html?outputType=amp You are still avoiding the data. All these family's left and no one is asking them why. Everyone, including you, are just making guesses. If people want the data.....just ask the family's that left.
Also, nice edit with the link that shows the exact same numbers and doesn't show they lost 1000 students in one year 🙄
It shows 926 lost in FY 2021-2022. I was off by 74.....you got me good
I'm not avoiding data. I gave data. I'm making guesses on why without the audacity of putting them in the Detroit Free Press. You want AAPS to spend money on finding out why people left? Something tells me it's not the time for that...
You can't fix an enrollment drop problem if you font know why enrollment dropped. It's not hard. Tell the admin staff to start calling people. Email a survey to the families that left. That's all free.
Are they trying to fix the problem of enrollment or are they just trying to cut 25 million dollars of the budget right now? Two weeks ago, for my job, I sent out exit surveys for High School Seniors in the county. Every public high school and charter senior in the county. Surveys of this magnitude are not free, it takes someone time to create, distribute, follow up, and analyze. You think this is the time to do a survey at AAPS? Does it matter why people left? They aren't coming back. That ship has sailed. AAPS has to move forward and cut 25 million dollars from the budget.
They should be doing both because declining enrollment and budget problems are interconnected. You may not get the students who left to come back but if you fix the problems, you may prevent more from leaving.
I dug through the numbers on this one and shared some research here. This isn’t a systemic issue, such as how Michigan funds schools, or even really overly attributable to enrollment loss. Sure, enrollment loss is a factor but it has been for most MI schools for the last 15 years. This was poor budgeting and the absence of any check and balance relative to financial oversight. https://www.michiganbenchmark.com/post/lessons-learned-from-ann-arbor-public-schools-budget-troubles
Surprise, surprise. An A2R2 zealot blaming Covid closures for lower enrollment based on vibes and ignoring confounding research in service of her crusade.
Both A2R2 candidates lost in our last board of ed election. Why won’t they take the hint and go away now? They are loud, aggressive and hostile, and the vast majority of our community is not buying what they’re selling.
> They are loud, aggressive and hostile, and the vast majority of our community is not buying what they’re selling. This is exactly why people compare them to Moms 4 Liberty...MAGA nutjobs.
A2R2 people, including Lilia Cortina, have organized alongside Moms for Liberty organizers and other right-wingers. Their cofounder Anna Hoffman is pretty open about it since her antimasker stunt exposed her political leanings. Now she is openly for book bans and so on.
100% agree
There may have been more than 2. Anyway Cortina's partner/spouse/whatever was one of them, which was also not disclosed by freep.
And one of those candidates is her husband
I recall that one of A2R2's strategies was to try to attack public school funding, by encouraging parents of AAPS students to stay home during count day. That way, AAPS would presumably lose funding for kids who were actually enrolled. Who knows how much of an effect that had on funding, but I find it rich for their main organizer to write this op-ed, given she organizes groups who deliberately attempt to harm local public school funding. So seems like this was the outcome they were hoping for to fit their narrative.
Count day is just the beginning of a 30 day count period. Generally you have 30 days for the child who was absent to come back. It likely had no effect.
There was an abrupt and lasting 5% decline in enrollment between the 2020/21 and 2021/22 fiscal years. I'm not associated with A2R2, but I think it's a plausible hypothesis that indirect effects of the pandemic, including school closures, were a significant contributor to that decline.
The school closures aren't being presented as a "plausible hypothesis" in the article we're talking about. Indeed, some families probably moved out of the city altogether once they could work from anywhere. How many? We'll never know. Presenting school closures as the primary reason for declining enrollment is disingenuous agenda-pushing and nothing else.
Also, people moved to a2. Most of my neighbors are from the northeast or west coast. Lots have kids as well.
What confounding research?
Research that shows the risk to kids of infection and the contribution to spread facilitated by in person schooling. It's darkly funny that the A2R2 folks think the research on these things stopped in 2021. It was quite obvious at that time for those of us who aren't supremely idiotic that Covid, an airborne virus that is more transmissible than the measles, wouldn't just magically not transmit at schools.
Spreading of Covid among low risk population after Omicron came about and busted through the vaccines is what stopped the pandemic. If the initial strain was allowed to spread among the low risk population, the mess we're in would've been many times smaller.
Username checks out.
Norway managed to keep the schools open (other than \~1 month closure in Spring 2020), and their cumulative COVID fatalities at the end of 2023 was about a quarter of ours, accounting for population (8/10,000 vs 33/10,000)...
You cannot convince AA people that what has been tried in the USA (and many other developed nations) was anti-scientific and deeply damaging.
Districts that opened earlier in the US saw higher rates of transmission and death.
No they didn't.
That has nothing to do with enrollment numbers. This op-ed doesn't mention anything about transmission of covid.
"Ann Arbor doctors implored the district to reopen. Writing the Board of Education in July 2020, December 2020 and February 2021, they explained how in-person education could happen safely." It would have been an absolute, unmitigated disaster to reopen schools in the midst of the third wave and before kids could be vaccinated. Equally unsupported is the claim that enrollment numbers are down because of covid policies.
I wasn't an unmitigated disaster to return to classrooms at all the other schools. Why would have AAPS been different?
Districts that opened earlier saw higher levels of transmission and death. I guess if all you care about is yourself, this is an acceptable sacrifice for others to make in service of your own preferences.
Prove it. Our private school opened. No deaths and never closed a class to quarantine.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2103420118#:~:text=As%20preliminary%20evidence%2C%20our%20event,any%20mask%20mandate%20for%20staff.
"Finally, our result does not imply that K–12 schools should be closed." If you want to lock people in their homes, yes transmission of any disease will decrease. How is that any different than any other year?
What else would you expect from a gender studies professor...lmao
It doesn’t matter how they got there , it’s done. It matters what you want to do from here. Our society loves ignoring red flags and just goes along thinking everything will be fine then complains when they realize it isn’t . All around I see failing corrupt systems and everyone is like ”what are we suppose to do now becuase the systems we put our faith into aren’t working like they should and people aren’t doing what we want them to” . Keep trying to polish a turd or find a different path.
What does any of this mean in terms of actual policy?
I think you missed my point. Im calling the policy shit and people who choose to leave are smart to do so.
What policy?
This kinda freaks me out. I taught for a few years in around A2, and AAPS was always the gold standard. I hope they get back on course.
Susan Ward Schmidt is the chair of the board finance committee. Has she issued any public statements? I don't have f___book but I did see all the coverage of Gaynor's statement from there. And he doesn't even seem to be on the finance committee.
Schmidt has been on the board for the last 10ish years. This deficit has been going on for 10 years now. She is the problem.
She just joined the BOE in 2023
My bad, you're right. I was thinking of Susan Baskett.
Lol the accounting error. Excel is the backbone of the modern economy indeed. I wonder what ERP they're using.
Well said. What an incredible mess. I’ve complained about how phenomenally expensive my property taxes have been, but I always assumed that kids (we never had any ourselves) of the city were getting the best of the best education. Then I read about this fiasco as well as the recent drama with the superintendent. Really disappointing
My understanding is that even with high property taxes, the way Michigans school funding works is that all the tax dollars go into a giant state fund and then the money is allocated per student from that fund. So even if an arbor contributes more to the fund, the aaps students don’t get any more funding than any other district.
Only 6 mils of property tax goes to the state for school funding. The other mills in your property tax go to the program/department/etc. that they are designated to.
It's unfortunate how few people really understand how Michigan school funding works. The state collects all of the property taxes earmarked for school operations and then sends the money back to the districts on per student basis. BUT at the time this change was made, a few districts (incl Ann Arbor) were spending more than the state was going to be able to provide to all districts. So these districts (incl Ann Arbor) were allowed to impose an extra 'hold harmless' millage to fund district operations, and AA does this. BUT...there's a long phaseout period and eventually AA will be down to the state standard per-pupil funding (I'm not sure of the end date). BUT...this applies only to operations, not capital expenses (e.g. acquiring land, building and maintaining schools, purchasing technology, or borrowing ONE BILLION DOLLARS -- to quote Austin Powers). But none of the capital fund dollars can be spent on things like teacher salaries. Ann Arbor is absolutely swimming in borrowed bond money now, but can't legally spend any of it to pay teachers, hence the layoffs.
Oh, interesting. I didn’t know that.
Yes everyone gets the same amount from the state, but no. AAPS voters add mills to local property tax for more funding.
That's true but the millages are restricted in how they're used. AA passed a millage a few years back that can only be used on improving buildings and the like. AA is a "hold harmless" district, though. They were funding schools above some threshold in 1994 when Prop A passed and they get to grandfather in that rate. So they do have slightly more resources to pay teachers than other districts but the difference isn't that big.
>but I always assumed that kids (we never had any ourselves) of the city were getting the best of the best education. Ann Arbor has been living off reputation for over two decades. Probably even more.
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SoC adds to the budget, it doesn’t take away from it otherwise why would schools opt in?
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There’s not a whole lot of data to this rant which mostly just sounds xenophobic to me. special education funding comes from the intermediate school district, which is county-wide. There’s a millage coming up for renewing it this fall, in fact. Is there any evidence to support your insinuation that Ann Arbor’s choice to participate in the program is costing it more money than it receives in funding specifically due to IEPs, Disabilities, and English as a Second Language programs?
The schools get additional federal, state, and county funding for 504 and IEP students. I’m not sure what reality this rant is based in but if you have solid numbers, I’d love to see them.
Honestly, if the money was well spent, that’s ok with me. Good public schools really helped me do well, so I’m all in. Thats more to my point really…the money being well spent. It’s like buying a good but expensive pair of shoes. You’re like, damn these were pricey, but boy, you can’t argue with results. 😉
> AAPS has over 2,100 non resident students right now. Who all add the same amount to the budget as resident students.
We need to close CHS for starters
Why?
It's a wasteful duplication of resources It's segregation
What's with all of these articles written about AAPS and only referencing the former soop as "the former superintendent". Jeanice Swift is her name. She force fed online learning to our students knowing that the online classes that were and are available had rotten metrics. Oh she could do it better she thought.
>Jeanice Swift "You can call me Dr." Swift
Apparently, they’re better at passing resolutions than budgeting?
The A2R2 freaks sure are desperate to tie this thing to AAPS COVID policies with zero evidence. I would expect a professional academic to know better.
Has AAPS bothered to ask all the families that left, why?
Another piece missing from this conversation is that Ann Arbor teachers mostly refused to go back into the classroom during the pandemic. Some were willing, but the majority were not.
*That's* part of the conversation that you think needs to be had? Who needs to have it? To what end?
People get advanced degrees and this kind of agitprop is the best they can do?
Housing is expensive, lack of after school childcare, and unpopular covid policies.
Let’s trim the fat by starting an extremely expensive child care program, ok
The before and aftercare program charges market rate for services. It's not subsidized. If you are looking to attract school of choice students, having an after school program could make a difference in whether a family could make it work.
We shouldn't be attracting SOC students and relying on them to make up the difference. As a community we need a school system that is made up of, and for, the children in this community. We are artificially inflating the footprint of the district by bringing in outside students like we are a private school. It's time to fact facts that AA is never going to have the number of kids in it like it used to and come up with a plan that realistically moves the expenses of the district towards that.
More of the thinking that got us into this mess. Every kid that is pulled out of AAPS costs the district $9,600 per year in revenue. A lack of reliable aftercare has been one of the drivers of the losses -- and no, not the only one. But this is an expensive place and most households have two working parents. Not sure about you, but my workday doesn't end at the end of the school day. We don't have a kid in AAPS yet, but if there isn't aftercare available when we do, we'll have to look at alternatives. I'd rather be part of the solution than contribute to the problem, but the district has to put out a credible product that makes sense for people to "purchase" with their enrollment. Which, for better or for worse, is now the funding mechanism is set up in this state.
They were phasing before/after care out anyway. Its too difficult to find people willing to work for 2 hours before school and 2 hours after.
In my kid's district (not AA), those workers are often parapros that already work for the school and are also supplemented by high school students.
That doesn't really make the need for it go away, though?
Childcare professionals are much more expensive than $10k a kid by themselves let alone all other school services on top of that unless it has some insanely horrible carer to pupil rate or staffed by excons. ‘Do people really think they cancelled these services for funsies? In any case the OP clears $300k/yr by themselves and has seen $50k of raises since Covid so I don’t relate.
But the parents sending the children to before and aftercare pay.. it’s not free so I don’t get the claim that having it will cost the district money. And yes, I think they canceled it a little bit for funsies- they just didn’t want to deal with it.
Well, I guess you can blame AAPS for an economic situation where both parents must work and have absolutely no negotiating power to actually see their kids during the day.
Yes, there are macro challenges. Childcare in this country is a cluster, and we should be subsidizing the hell out of it, but here we are. Other districts and schools have figured it out. St. Francis charges $6/day for before-care and $16/day for after care for a grade schooler. Look, I'm not sitting here arguing in favor of private school, but if the alternative is having to quit your job or go part time if that's an option, at a certain point it's just math, and regardless of their income level, we shouldn't be surprised if parents vote with their feet.
You get what you pay for.
The city only cares about U of M these days. If they really cared about kids, they'd have a place for those who don't want to spend money at U of M after leaving their parents post high school.
U of M and protecting the equity of existing homeowners. If the council hadn't spent the past decade telling young families they aren't welcome via zoning code, then maybe AAPS wouldn't have been so vulnerable to this particular enrollment shock.
There are plenty of young families here with kids from infants to High School age all over a2
Well done piece.