One of the tots got into a fight at school. With the teacher. About the millage proposed by the Washtenaw Intermediate School District (WISD).
Education has changed since I was a kid. My teachers talked about things like the beauty of long division and the evils of sloppy cursive. The tot related the story to me, and described the teacher as red-faced and “pissed off.” Why? Because the tot argued against the not-yet-proposed city income tax and questioned whether the WISD needed the millage. Shouldn’t our schools spend the money they have more carefully, my budding fiscal conservative (at least as far as others are concerned) wondered out loud to his teacher, before coming to taxpayers for a hand-out? Is it the best time to hit up taxpayers whose economic circumstances may have changed for the worse? Why not just get rid of the WISD? All valid questions.
Funding for education is, alas, more about politics than it is about educating children. It all boils down to begging, borrowing or stealing enough money make payroll, having enough cash to keep up with the crushing retiree health care and pension obligations smothering school districts around the country, and having a little left over to give the Art Teacher $500 bucks a year for supplies to use when teaching 300 kids. Education has become like the health care industry: no matter how much money taxpayers throw at it, the results don’t seem to ever be as stellar as we’d like. In Ann Arbor, our District has a pronounced achievement gap. In February 2008, the Ann Arbor News published a piece that summed it up thusly, “The district has long had a gap in the test scores, grade point averages, graduation rate and suspension rate between white and minority students.” In 2004, Time published a particularly gruesome exposé about the Ann Arbor School District’s achievement gap. Then, in March 2009, the Ann Arbor News published a piece titled, “Achievement Gap Tackled in New Ann Arbor Schools Policy.”
And we’re throwing $9,490 dollars per year at each student enrolled in the AAPS. Ann Arbor School Musings blog has an interesting comparison of per pupil spending in the entire WISD here. In 2007-2008, WISD schools spent a staggering $466 million dollars to educate a total of 46,704 students. Well, kinda. You see, according to a piece posted to AnnArbor.com, “About 23.5 cents of every dollar went toward traditional central office functions like instruction coordinators, the business office, district administrators and building administrators.” That’s $109,000,000 every year for the nice folks to administer the WISD. The WISD spent 58 cents out of every dollar on educating those 46,704 students. So that’s $270,280,000 to educate the tots. Looked at another way, WISD administration gets almost $.40 cents for every $1.00 spent on instruction.
It’s all about the Money. In this case, tax dollars.
If the WISD were a mutual fund, and tried to hit investors with a 23.5 percent management and administrative fee, the scam would die a quick and deserved death. The average management and administration fee at a mutual fund is between 1 and 2 percent per year, according to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Of course mutual funds make money to cover overhead in other ways, but my point is this, spending $.40 cents on administration for every $1.00 spent on instruction is a sign that there is something terribly out of whack at the WISD Central Office.
Over at Concentrate, blogger (guest blogger, before Concentrate editor Jeff Meyers comes over and boxes my ears, electronically) Amy Goodson (Amy’s bio is here [tip o' the keyboard to Jeff Meyers] ) argues in favor of the WISD millage when she writes that “literacy builds sustainable communities.” As much as I would love to jump on Goodson’s bandwagon and attribute sustainable community to literacy, and literacy to the success of the WISD millage, I can’t. I understand the point she is trying to make, but I think because she’s using it to argue in favor of a millage to support the WISD, she simply uses the broadest of strokes to make her argument. In Michigan, there is a generation of people who worked at the auto companies and could move into high-paying jobs with, perhaps, Level 1 literacy skills. The Glass House in Dearborn is a monument to Henry Ford’s ingenuity, but not to Ford’s education; Henry Ford dropped out of school at 15. But in the 1920s and 30s when old man Ford was cranking out Tin Lizzies by the million, the literacy rate in the United States was 95 percent.
According to a piece about literacy worldwide published in The Guardian in March of this year, Washtenaw County has a literacy rate that is 11 points below the U.S. current average of 99 percent. Our County’s 88 percent literacy rate is equal to that of Turkey (88 percent), and equal to that of the United States in 1890. Wayne County’s Level 1 literacy rate is 70 percent, and only 69 percent of Lake County residents have Level 1 literacy skills. Washtenaw County, in fact, has one of the highest rates of Level 1 literacy in the state of Michigan.
Of course we can do better. However, a percentage of those 12 percent of Washtenaw County residents (about 27,000 individuals) classified as not having Level 1 literacy skills, are adults for whom English is not their first language. They are literate, just in a different language. More to the point still, according to the Washtenaw County Literacy Coalition all of the individuals in Washtenaw County classified as lacking Level 1 literacy skills are adults.
Thus, the proposed millage for the WISD will have little impact the literacy rate of adults in our county. It will, however, allow those who administer the WISD to continue to skim $.40 cents off of every dollar spent on educating our county’s students.
Note: If you want to vote in the Weekend Poll: “Do You Support the WISD Millage?” click here.
Popularity: 18% [?]
feed://www.a2politico.com/?feed=rss2
The WISD website has no financial information. The state website has audits for most local governments but I could not find anything for the WISD. The WISD appears to have its own buildings and staff so I assume they spend tax dollars. Does anyone know what kind of financial reports they issue and where they can be found?
Comment by Karen Sidney — October 15, 2009 @ 6:16 pm
[...] More: The Politics of Education: Money Can’t buy You Literacy….Right? [...]
Pingback by The Politics of Education: Money Can’t buy You Literacy….Right? — October 15, 2009 @ 6:47 pm
This is exactly why I am not voting for this millage. There is way too much money spent on things other than educating the children.
Comment by A2GOP — October 15, 2009 @ 9:32 pm
Aside from the fact that her name is Amy Goodman, do you mean this bio?
http://www.concentratemedia.com/blogs/bloggers/AmyGoodman0076.aspx
Comment by Jeff Meyers — October 15, 2009 @ 11:53 pm
Nice to hear from you, Jeff. Thanks for the link and the electronic box about the ears. You voting for the millage?
Comment by A2 Politico — October 16, 2009 @ 7:13 am
Regarding the WISD: The WISD is public, they have a board of directors. Here is the link to the budget reports: http://www.wash.k12.mi.us/busservices/busoffice.cfm
If that is not what you want, you can probably ask for more.
Regarding per-pupil funding and the millage: Ann Arbor has the highest per-pupil funding in the county because it was one of 11 “hold harmless” districts during Proposal A. In other words, one of the deals that was cut was that those districts that had high school property taxes would not be forced to lose a lot of their money at that time, but the “floor” would be brought up. Even so, Ann Arbor is still a “donor” district in that a lot of Ann Arborite’s taxes go out of Ann Arbor. IN ANY CASE–the MILLAGE is not an Ann Arbor millage, it is a county-wide millage, and would go to support all of the districts, some of which are at or near the very bottom of the funding ladder.
Comment by Ruth — October 16, 2009 @ 5:18 pm
Ruth,
Thanks for the link. I couldn’t find it anywhere on the web site, either.
Comment by A2 Politico — October 16, 2009 @ 8:58 pm
The WISD does far more than just administer a business budget. They provide services for the most impaired students from the time they are in pre-school through young adulthood. They provide education and training for the teachers of the Districts in order to ensure that they are knowledgeable about the latest technology. They provide assistive technology, such as speech recognition software, for those students who are unable to perform simple tasks due to an impairment. How much of the “$.40 per dollar that they skim” goes to these services? If we were to get rid of the WISD the responsiblitly of these services would fall on the individual Districts – do you believe that they could provide these services for less money?
I will be voting for this millage because I believe the schools need this money. Ann Arbor has worked hard to trim their budget and live within their means(since Dr. Roberts). For example, two years ago they restructered the middle schools for a savings of over $3.5 million dollars. Sure, maybe they could cut back on supplies – putting even a larger burden on their hard working teachers – but how much copy paper, lined paper, kleenex, or pencils would it take to save programs, jobs, and to keep class sizes to a reasonable level?
School districts such as Willow Run are already operating in defecit spending; without this money they will have to close more schools, laying off more teachers, and cutting more services, if they can afford to operate at all.
Perhaps your arguments against the WISD are valid, but are you willing to lose teachers and have the class sizes increase in your “tot’s” school? As a teacher and a mom I don’t think there should EVER be more than 25 students in a classroom; but that isn’t happening now, and it certainly won’t happen if the millage doesn’t pass.
And yes, the achievement gap is an embarassment to our District, but cutting money and jobs certainly isn’t the answer….bold conversations about race, and training teachers in new teaching methods may be a better place to start.
Comment by Letitia — October 16, 2009 @ 9:50 pm
Welcome to A2Politico, Letitia.
My main concern is, of course, the amount of money that is siphoned away from instruction by administration. That almost 1/4 of all of the money goes toward administration is something to be examined very closely and critically, as well, as race and teaching methods. Of course the administrators will cut programs and teachers before they cut their own ranks. That’s where the School Board comes in. Those elected officials HAVE to start questioning the amounts of money spent, on for instance, consultants. They can also send back budgets prepared that cut instructional programs and instruct administrators to cut their own ranks, as well as administrative allocations.
The biggest problem as I see it is that our District is staggering under a HUGE burden of health insurance payments to current staff and retirees. No future retiree should get health insurance from the District. That’s what Medicare is for. It’s a program that works quite well. Finally, the School Board must stand up to the MEA and boot the MEA-owned health insurance program off the menu.
Comment by A2 Politico — October 16, 2009 @ 10:22 pm
When navigating from the front page of Cencentrate using the blog bread crumb link at the top, it goes directly to your list of recent (?) blog entries. No bios in sight. I read the entry, and at the bottom I can leave a comment, if I like.
Your response here is somewhat mistaken. First of all, you’re presuming everyone navigates your site the way you do. That’s just a fatal error for anyone whose business relies on a web page. By expecting users to navigate the way you do is like you’re expecting the tail to wag the dog. It doesn’t work that way. Any web architect will tell you that users hate to click multiple times. They just won’t do it. On your site, I go to the main page, then to the blogs using the main page bread crumb link, and read down the page of blogs, looking for one that interests me. I don’t click through to each title, because I can leave a comment without doing so.
Expecting users to click through is a pretty common web architecture mistake. Unless you’re just trying to increase page views, but it’s a pretty cheesy way to do it.
That’s why a link to author information should go at the end of the entries regardless of which blog page the user navigates to. You know where everything is your tool shed is, but a complete stranger doesn’t. Getting snotty about the fact that a stranger can’t find the info. on your site you can locate readily reflects poorly on your site, not the visitor to your site.
Comment by Yale89 — October 16, 2009 @ 11:13 pm
The Washtenaw Republican party just came out against the WISD millage. There was a letter to the editor in the A2Journal.
Comment by A2 Politico — October 16, 2009 @ 11:29 pm
Ruth
Thanks for the link to the budget information. That’s helpful but I was looking for audited financial statements of actual spending. The AAPS posts it’s audits on it’s website. They show that total spending was $231.2 million in fiscal year 2007 and $239.2 million in fiscal year 2008. General fund spending increased from $184.5 to $187.7 million from fiscal year 2007 to 2008.
The fiscal year 2009 audit, which covers 7/1/08-6/30-09 is not posted yet, probably because it is not finished. If the AAPS spent more money in 2009 than 2008, I don’t consider it a spending cut. They may be doing the same thing the city of Ann Arbor is and spending more to provide fewer services but I’d call that service cuts, not spending cuts.
Comment by Karen Sidney — October 17, 2009 @ 11:09 am
I don’t like the idea of 30% of the tax funds from the Ann Arbor District collections will go out-of-district, per the numbers in the annarbor.com print edition this morning. That is the main sticking point for me. The WISD can dance around that fact all day, but until I get to vote for the Willow Run School Board, or until there is a county wide school governing board and a consolidated disctict, count me out. Some, but not all of these folks moved from Ann Arbor to avoid the tax burden and now expect us to pick up this tab? I think not.
It makes me sick to be supporting the same thing the slimeball Republican Party is, but life is strange sometimes.
Comment by Alan Goldsmith — October 18, 2009 @ 8:49 am
To play the devil’s advocate for a moment, what about the people who live in, say, Willow Run and live there not because they’re avoiding the tax burden, but because that’s where they can AFFORD to live? Isn’t the point to have educated children. Period. So Willow Run gets some of the money. They need it. So does the Ypsi District. Don’t those better off have an obligation to help?
Now, I TOTALLY agree with you about the WISD Board. They are elected by a an electoral college formed by a single member from each of the Washtenaw District’s School Boards. The time has come to look at what it means to fund education and where the money goes. $466,000,000 to educate 47,000 students seems like more than enough. However, $109,000,000 dollars go toward providing jobs, salaries, benefits, pensions, etc… for 200 WISD staff/administrators.
Comment by A2 Politico — October 18, 2009 @ 9:00 am
Everyone in the whole of Washtenaw County will be paying 2 mills and the money will be distributed among the Districts based on the number of pupils in said District; the claim that we are supporting other Districts is sort of skewed. We are the largest City in the WISD, therefore more money seems to be coming out of Ann Arbor, but we are also getting the largest percentage returned to our District as well – no one is getting a “free ride” in this proposal.
Also in this morning’s article it was stated that Annis and Giswold claim that there is one teacher for every 14 students; I would like to know who they are counting as teachers? No teacher I know, and I know a whole lot, has much less than 30 kids per classroom.
Comment by Letitia — October 18, 2009 @ 7:09 pm
Someone just sent me this link to an op-ed in the Detroit Free Press: http://detnews.com/article/20091004/OPINION03/910040307/Teacher-perks-bleed-budget-dry
“Teacher Perks Bleed Budget Dry.”
I found the math interesting. The part about the Michigan Education Association, and the union’s grasp on lawmakers is absolutely true. Rebekah Warren, Liz Brater and Pam Byrnes, have all been given large donations by the MEA. The donations don’t mean the MEA owns them, but the donations will get union officials face time when bills the union doesn’t like come up.
The numbers quoted in the editorial were very interesting. $1,600 per pupil in Michigan just to fund teacher benefits, 41 percent above the national average. Whew!
Comment by A2 Politico — October 18, 2009 @ 7:34 pm
Letitia, the AAPS District officials claim that there is a teacher-student ratio somewhere between 1:14 and 1:19.
Comment by Yale89 — October 18, 2009 @ 7:57 pm
So why DOES the WISD Board only have ONE rep per district when the majority of students are in the A2 District?
Shouldn’t the number of reps be based on student population?
Comment by Alan Goldsmith — October 19, 2009 @ 9:29 am
From the WISD web site: “WISD is one of 57 regional educational service agencies created by Michigan law in 1962 to help local school districts educate students by making the best use of district resources.”
Members of WISD’s school board are elected biennially on the first Monday in June by a body of
electors composed of one member from each constituent school district board of education. WISD
Board members’ terms are staggered. Each serves a six-year term. This is the current Board:
Mary Jane Tramontin, President 761-2729
Mark Van Bogelen, Vice President 428-7872
Dayle K. Wright, Treasurer 487-5582
Gregory A. Peoples, Secretary 475-1563
Diane B. Hockett, Trustee 662-8382
Comment by A2 Politico — October 19, 2009 @ 3:00 pm
Yale89, I believe that the AAPS District officials state a lower teacher-student ratio would be for a couple reasons. First, it is just good business sense when promoting your schools to show that the teacher/student ratio is low. There are indeed many support teachers in the district at every level. My guess would be that this figure includes ESL teachers, media specialists, speech therapists, educational psychologists, social workers, teacher (consultants who work with individual teachers and small groups of students with special needs), teacher aides who are assigned (legally mandated) to work with individual students with special needs, and teachers of students with developmental delays. I’m probably forgetting some. Letitia is correct that most general education classroom teachers have close to thirty students. When those other teachers are removed, the classroom teacher will have more than thirty students without their much needed support.
Comment by Interested — October 31, 2009 @ 12:27 pm
“it is just good business sense when promoting your schools”
That probably says more than Interested intended. I think the unquestioned (by many) assumption that growth is good is behind such perspectives. We end up ‘competing’ our way into an unsustainable cycle of the sort that one of my high school football coaches lamented for preventing kids from playing sports, thusly: “Why can’t you play this season?” “I need a job to pay for my car.” “Why do you need a car?” “To get to my job.”
Let’s ask ourselves why we’re promoting our schools, and let’s not stop inquiring until we’ve gone full circle.
Comment by SBean — October 31, 2009 @ 9:37 pm