Community High School

A Budget Divided

In Craig Levin’s fifth block analysis class, there are five students crowded at nearly every table and several do not have textbooks. However, they can hear Levin clearly because he uses the latest technology installed in Community High School, Phonic Ear’s Classroom Amplification System.

Do the benefits of having a high-tech sound system outweigh employing a new teacher to make that class size smaller?

Jason McKnight, a civics and Latin teacher at CHS, is frustrated that the school can spend $6,000 on banners when he cannot get a $300 set of dictionaries for his class. Why does the school need a banner to make the front of the school appealing when it could have more supplies inside?

The Ann Arbor Public schools face a difficult problem when they allocate where money will go each year: there are actually two independent budgets, and it is illegal for money from the two to mix.  One budget, the operating budget, pays for teachers, buses and maintenance, the other, the capital budget, is used for items like new buildings, banners and technology.

There is much debate over how these budgets should be funded and which fund is more important. What issue lies underneath the $6,000 banners?

Separate but unequal

Peter Ways, dean of CHS, wanted three people to listen to him while he was interviewed by The Communicator. The issue, he explained, was so complicated he wanted to be absolutely positive the staff understood and did not write an inflammatory piece about something they did not comprehend.  In his capacity as Administrator for Technology Services, he has had to deal with numerous complaints from Ann Arbor residents that the monies could be better spent.

“There’s a fundamental misunderstanding as to what’s possible and what’s not,” Ways said of the complaints.

He explained that the operating budget is funded exclusively by the state government. The only way for it to increase is for the number of students in the district to grow. This is regulated by Proposal A, passed in 1994.

However, the capital budget can be increased by local ballot initiatives (quite easy to sell here, he said).  In 2004, Ann Arbor voters passed a bond that gave the district approximately $205 million to build a new high school, renovate existing schools and install new technology.  Ways said that lawmakers convinced the public that developments were a good idea and would attract more students on the principle that the new bond would solve overcrowding at the high schools. In a way, besides completing its named priorities, the capital budget also serves as a utility to increase the number of students by enticing them into the district– a sort of advertising fund.

Ways wishes the operating budget could be raised directly instead of spending money on the other budget, but not every administrator in the district agrees with him.

Glenn Nelson, Board of Education secretary, says new technology is a good way to attract young high-skilled, high-education and high-income parents to the city who want to send their children to a top-notch public school system. It is ideal for the Ann Arbor Public schools to be able to say that their buildings are not overcrowded and employ the latest technology.

Some students at CHS do not approve of the advertising strategy. Blythe Moreland, a junior, says the decision to install sound systems made her upset. “It’s not as cool to boast ‘We have teachers!’ as ‘We have sound fields,’ because who has sound fields?  But then again, no one needs them.  Could they be painting a crumbling wall with fool’s gold?” Moreland said.

So far the sound systems do not appear to have made a huge impact. “I haven’t been paying much attention to them,” sophomore Dean Parrish said. “The teachers don’t seem to be using them much.” Added junior Rachel Siegfried, “It’s cool how they let people hook up their iPods in the hallways.”

Proposal A

In 1994, debate centered on cutting taxes, and Reaganomics were in full swing. According to a Michigan Education Policy Fellowship Program report, some districts had as little as $3,400 per child while others had as much as $10,000.

Proposal A was crafted as a remedy for this inequality and to lower taxes.  Districts would no longer have to raise their own funds locally, but would receive them from the state on the basis of the number of students enrolled.

The proposal passed, but after six or seven years education funding decreased drastically. It was then that administrators of wealthier districts such as Ann Arbor began to oppose Proposal A. “If the state would fund education more appropriately, then something like Proposal A would be desirable,” Nelson says. Now, he says, wealthy Ann Arbor residents are almost able to fund their schools independently, which would save the state money. He explained that if the district could attract entrepreneurs and professionals who would pay high taxes to the state, funding would increase statewide and thus help other school districts (that is, the percentage of taxes given to education).

The effects of Proposal A are controversial. The idea of equality in school districts sounds good, but in practice most high-income districts want to succeed individually. Most educators across Michigan are not happy about the current state of funding. Ann Arbor Superintendent Todd Roberts says of Proposal A, “It’s not working [to provide adequate funding for the school districts]. It probably never was.” He says that the real value of the per-pupil funding is declining because of inflation.

There were some positives aspects of Proposal A: it succeeded in lowering property and income taxes. It did slightly decrease the gap between richer districts and poorer districts in some studies.

Lobbying for change

Jason McKnight’s first teaching job was in Admore, Oklahoma for a district called Plainview. He was fresh out of college and did not know anything about budgeting and schools. In Ardmore, the teacher’s union was not strong and there was not as much money to distribute, so the administration and teachers worked together to allocate funds where they needed to be most.

In the fall of 2002, McKnight moved to the Ann Arbor Public School district. He enjoyed better pay and noted the huge quality increase in the education system from his former job. However, he also noticed high expectations from the public.

“This district tends to ignore efficiency,” he said. “There is no strong business model.” McKnight added that teachers and students expect funding for luxurious items like shuttle buses and consulting services, and that the district has a hard time saying no.

Unlike Plainview, McKnight notices a difference in the way administration and teachers treat each other in Ann Arbor. He says because of the strong teacher union and lack of state funding, there is an unspoken divide between the two groups. This frustrates him because he wishes that teachers, administration and the public could join and lobby the state for adequate funds.

“The more a community unites, the stronger the message,” McKnight said. He added, “I feel like this administration could do more bridge building and less wall building.”

District representatives regularly pressure state legislators to repeal or modify some of the conditions of Proposal A which prevent the district from raising more money locally, says Board of Education Vice-President Irene Patalan.  Superintendent Roberts, however, says that at the local level there are really no ways to get around the budget partition.  The district has tried to save money on long-term maintenance expenses that would fall under the operating budget by spending the money on replacing old facilities and equipment. This summer, the capital budget paid for the replacement of several windows at Community High School that will make heating more efficient, thus shaving money off the operating budget.

Proposal A does not prevent the district from raising money at a county-wide level, though this is much harder to pull off.  Washtenaw county voters as a whole can approve a transfer of tax dollars to the operating budget.  Patalan says that the district meets with leaders of the 11 school districts that make up Washtenaw County in order to get their approval.  In this process, timing is important.  If several districts have recently passed expensive bonds on their own, they are less likely to support a county-wide millage.

The state of the Michigan budget leads to difficult decisions, like choosing which teachers not to replace when they retire and how much money can go to buying new textbooks. “I think it really used to be simpler,” says Patalan. “We’d fight about things like the color of the t-shirts. Now we’re fighting for our lives.”