Although dealing with slim funds is nothing new for public schools, school districts across Michigan could be facing some very tough times ahead. Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder’s budget proposal for the 2011-12 fiscal year removes $453 per pupil across the state, among other major cuts to the poor, the old, and the working. The reason for the cuts lies in affording the removal of the Michigan Business Tax, giving big business in Michigan a tax break worth $1.2 billion. With a projected deficit of $7 million for next year, the Ann Arbor Public School District could see its deficit rise to $15 million. Because a school system cannot legally run on a deficit, AAPS must make major cuts in opera­tions for next year. Of course, a prob­lem arises: AAPS has been steadily reducing its expenditures for the past five years – there is not much left to cut. The origins of this mess begin long before Gov. Snyder took office in January. To understand the complexity of the situation at hand, the history of how public schools are funded must be revealed.

An Interesting Proposal

Rewind 18 years to 1993, when Re­publican Gov. John Engler presented his ideas to reform the education financial system to the Michigan Legislature based on a report entitled “Our Kids Deserve Better, New Schools for a New Century.” The governor, who ran on the campaign promise to lower property taxes for Michigan residents, called for a restructuring of school funding. At the time, school districts were not funded by local taxes; schools were primarily funded at the state level.

The new system, later known as Proposal A, would raise the sales tax from four to six percent and give three quarters of that money to the school aid fund, a new separate budget from Michigan’s general fund. Another major key point of Proposal A was a reduction to the inequality between school districts within the state. In 1993, the poorest school districts could only afford a third per student what the wealthiest could. As schools were funded by local property taxes, communities with fewer homes or lower property values could not af­ford to give as much to their schools as other communities.

Proposal A would provide funding for schools from the state by a “foundation allowance,” a dollar amount per student. The student population would be counted on man­datory “count days,” one in October and one in February. At first, the foundation allowance was different for different school districts – the state could not afford to bring everyone up to the same level at once – so a minimum and maximum was established, with the intent to balance the rate over time. In March of 1994, 69 percent of vot­ers chose Proposal A, and the Michi­gan constitution was amended.

At the time, Michigan’s property tax was more than 33 percent above the national average. In Ann Arbor,  a district that was already paying more per student than the new funding al­lowed, the Ann Arbor Public Schools, and other districts like it, were allowed to continue collecting property taxes to make up the difference lost by the new funding, but only at a fixed rate. While the dollar amount of the foundation al­lowance has steadily increased, its actual buying power when inflation is taken into account has dropped significantly. The $9,325 allocated per student to AAPS in 2009 was worth about $6,500 in 1994 dollars.

Tough Times

In 2009, AAPS teachers took conces­sions in pay and benefits worth four and a half million dollars. That amount was the result of two major changes is salary. Teacher’s pay is determined by a yearly step increase chart. Every year a teacher works for AAPS, they receive a slight pay increase. In 2009, the Ann Arbor Education Association teachers union agreed to freeze the step increase by 75%, meaning teachers only receive a quarter increase of what they should. Secondly, teachers took a deduction of four days worth of pay. The first two from “furlough days”, where teach­ers were required to work but not get paid at all, and the other two are known as “personal business days”, or unpaid vacation days that if teachers chose not to use, could request compensation for upon retirement. With the removal of four days worth of pay and the frozen step increase, teachers received on average salary cuts worth $3,500 each, or 6% of their original pay.

“It’s painful to see your pay freeze and see inflation go up,” said Liz Stern, teacher at CHS for 12 years. “It’s pain­ful to take pay cuts when your expenses stay the same. But when you’re a begin­ning teacher, a two, three, or four year teacher, you’re not making very much money.” Craig Levin, teacher at CHS for 11 years, pointed out the trend of dimin­ishing returns. “Part of the biggest problem is that we do more and more each year, and for the last few years we’re being rewarded with more to do, and less for doing more”…I’m spending less time with the students. I’m spending less time talking to teachers. I’m spending less time doing things for my students at school.”

“Historically the teachers instead of bargaining high salaries have bargained good benefits,” said Marcia Schaffer, teacher for 35 years. “And that’s always been our trade off, that we have good benefits. But now when you start taking away both, the not great salary and then increasing benefits, it’s designed to push public education out, and I’m not sure that’s [Gov. Snyder’s] endgame, but that is what he’s doing.”

“You don’t go into teaching for money,” said Stern. “You really don’t. You don’t go into teaching for security either. This is not the kind of job you can go into without really liking kids and wanting to teach. It’s passion, it’s a service.” Stern continued to mention that while teaching requires a great deal of love for the job it is not at the ex­pense of her livelihood. “It is a calling, but I’m not going to sacrifice my family. I’m not taking a vow of poverty.” “And that’s essentially what the governor’s asking,” remarked Ken McGraw, teacher at CHS.

While teachers pay have consistently been diminished over the years, that is not the only expenditure in risk of cuts. “At any negotiation, whether its tough times or fat times, you’ve got three things that we talk about at the table.” said Brit Satchwell, president of the AAEA, and teacher at Forsythe Middle School. According to Satchwell, the three things that are inevitably dis­cussed are the number of people, the amount of wages, and the number of programs. “If they take away from any one, than the other two are affected.” Because the AAEA and the school board agreed there will be no layoffs from 2009 to 2011, jobs are spared for now. But that negotiation expires the first school day of next year.

“You have a job on day one, but on day two next year, they could hand out pink slips.” While layoffs are a concern among teachers, it is “undoubtable” that surplussing, especially among teachers with less seniority, will be very common next year, according to Satchwell. Sur­plussing is the reassignment of one’s job, and most typically means teaching at another building, or teaching in mul­tiple buildings in the same day. A teacher’s assignment is measured with a formula known as “Full Time Equivalency”, or FTE. Each class taught is worth .2 FTE., making a full schedule, or five classes, worth 1.0 FTE. In order to reduce costs for next year, administrators are required to reduce the schools FTE by a certain number, and because laying off is not an option, surplussing remains the best option. It has not been determined how many FTEs Community must remove for next year. CHS administrator Jen Hein still has time to decide how she will; so far, Pioneer and Huron High Schools have announced which staff will be surplussed next year.

Meanwhile, the salary of incom­ing superintendent Patricia Green will be $256,000 a year, a 40% raise from retired superintendent Todd Robert’s, which does not include benefits. AAPS Treasurer Irene Patalan explained the raise was to attract the highest quali­fied candidate for the new position in a rough economy. “In a more opportune time, I don’t know if there would be more people wanting to be superintendents of schools in Michigan, I think Michigan is a tough place right now.” Patalan also mentioned that Dr. Robert’s salary was considerably low for his workload. “In my mind, I think that Todd Robert’s was a real bargain…The su­perintendent is a job that is truly a 24 hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week job. We expect a lot from our superintendent, to be in all places in all times and to deal with all problems of running the district. I think we’re going to work [Dr. Green] hard, and I think she’s going to earn her wage.”

However, this raise has not gone without controversy. “It’s unspeakable,” said CHS teacher Ken McGraw of the superintendent’s raise. “The fact that the school board would do that to sort of mirror the policies that favor the rich is infuriating to me.”

Trimming Around the Edges

AAPS has managed to deal with budget deficits in the past. In 2009, after the results of the ill-fated Regional Enhancement Millage Proposal proved bad news for schools, the school dis­trict had a lot of overhead to reduce in its budget. The millage, a county-wide proposal to increase property taxes to fund schools in Washtenaw County, failed in November 2009. For this school year, the school board made an effort to make the cuts worth 16 million as unnoticeable as possible to the classroom. Staff reduction saved AAPS $7,570,000 in 2009. All custodi­ans witnessed a salary decrease of 8% to avoid their jobs being privatized. Outsourcing school meals, and consoli­dating substitutes and transportation to a county wide service saved around an­other million. Over the past five years, the school district has managed to cut 30 million dollars without any major changes to operations.

Keeping cuts as unnoticeable as possible avoids major disapproval from the public. “Ann Arbor has been trimming around the edges with as little impact, visible impact, to students and parents,” said Stern. “I don’t even think parents are really aware of what’s going on yet, because they haven’t seen the impact.” At a public meeting held at Commu­nity High, Executive Director of advo­cacy group Michigan Parents for Public Schools explained the dilemma for next year. “They’ve already restructured the middle schools, they’ve already cut back electives. In 2006 they bumped up the class size targets, all the way from ‘K’ through 12. There’s not a whole lot left to do now, but either ask for significant pay concessions – primarily from teach­ers who are the largest employee group – and or lay people off and pump class sizes up. Neither of those options are particularly good for a whole bunch of reasons.”

AAPS is a wealthy school district in terms of options for students, but with high graduation requirements, and an increased emphasis on academic classes, extra programs are in serious danger for next year. With three alter­native high schools, highly successful arts and music programs, the Commu­nity Resource and Options programs, a number of world languages, AP and AC classes, and many other programs offered at the high school level, AAPS seems to have a lot of expendable funds. But successful extracirculars and programs are what attract families to the school district, argues Norton.

“The public schools are very aware of the fact that the quality of our pro­grams, especially the alternatives that we offer at the high school level…are things that bring students into our dis­trict. And our funding is based entirely on how many kids we have enrolled. We lose kids, we lose money.” While no buildings are likely to close, there is a large concern as to what programs will be deemed essential, and which ones the schools can do without. “I always think about the endgame,” said Hein. “What is it that we want students to be able to do successfully when they leave high school to get to the next level. So what do you need to know, what do you need to learn, what are good universities and colleges expecting from students who apply. I don’t want our students to be impacted; I want all of our kids to be going to the top universities and colleges next year just like they do this year.”

It Takes a Millage

On May 3rd, voters across Washt­enaw county will decide if they want to renew the Regional Enhancement Millage which would help fund special education costs in public schools. AAPS spends $40 million annually on federally required special education services for two thousand students; services that range from instruction to support services and technology. The county wide millage is a renewal, and does not raise taxes. In fact, the millage alone does not cover the entire cost of special educa­tion in AAPS.

Due to lower property values, if the millage passes, AAPS will still need about one million dollars to continue funding special needs services. Community High’s ILC, or Inde­pendent Learning Center is one of the special education programs that is funded by the special education fund. As CHS does not have designated classes for special needs students, the ILC provides students with one-on-one help and allows special needs students to take regular classes. The ILC consists of three full time staff and three teacher’s assistants, whose roles consist of attending classes and taking notes for students, help­ing with homework and studying for tests, and working with teachers to find solutions for problems special needs students may encounter in the class­room.

A concern for ILC teacher Ellen Stone is the possibility of no longer having teachers assistants to help with that workload. “Teaching assistants are critical to have to do our work,” she said. T.A.s perform a considerable amount of the ‘in-class’ portion of the ILC’s role – participating in the class room, pro­viding notes and classwork for students. Another role of the ILC is compiling student data. Annual reports for each student that can take anywhere from six to ten hours to complete, and are a required component the ILC must present to the district.

“We live in a very data-driven world,” explained Stone. “The district has to show that we’ve followed the letter of the law, and in order to follow the letter of the law they want us to prove that we’ve been doing things a certain way so they’ve instituted systems for us, and what that means is more paperwork.” Stone mentions that as a consequence, ILC teachers spend less time directly helping students. “I think what really helps me help kids is my relationship with them, and the time that I spend with them, and the work that I do between the child and the parent, and the teacher and me. But if I’m spending eight to twelve hours writing a report and collecting data – the paperwork piece – that takes me away from students.” And less time for ILC teachers means less help for everybody. “ILC [has] just been absolutely ham­mered with a lot more paperwork,” said fellow teacher Stern. “Their workload is doubled. They will tell you themselves, they can’t help kids as much, and it has to go somewhere, so we help kids more.”

Forty percent of the money spent on special education is used to pay for instruc­tion. This means personnel, especially teaching assistants, may be risk for losing their jobs next year, putting even more strain on teachers throughout the building. If the Regional Enhancement Millage does not pass, AAPS must add another six million dollars to its deficit for next year, bringing the total deficit to $21 million. “May 3rd is a very big day,” explained Dean Jen Hein.

A Shared Sacrifice

“There will be shared sacrifice,” said the letter addressed to Michigan citi­zens in Rick Snyder’s budget proposal. “But through that shared sacrifice, Michigan will emerge as a stronger and more vibrant state.” While the “shared sacrifice” of re­building Michigan’s economy certainly falls square on the shoulders of the state’s most vulnerable, that burden is not shared among the wealthy. Repeal­ing the Michigan Business Tax saves big business $1.2 billion dollars statewide, and a flat-tax rate of 4% ensures that wealthy families will continue to be unaffected by tax increases the same way poorer ones do. The budget introduces the repealing of the Earned Income Tax Credit, a refundable income tax relief for the working poor, will cause low-income families to see their taxes rise 10 times greater than the wealthiest households.

While the budget already calls for $180 million in concessions from public employees, the introduction of separate but related Emergency Financial Man­ger legislation will allow the Michigan State Treasurer to appoint EFMs to re­place local government officials in any municipality deemed failing financially, and have the ability to alter or remove existing contracts as well as act as the sole agent in collective bargaining. Public employees including teachers, firefighters, and policemen could be taken over by a single, un-elected manager and cut jobs with no restraint.

It is clear Michigan must make efforts to close its $1.3 billion dollar deficit, but politi­cians in Lansing must be very weary of the effects of what they cut. Slashing funding to public schools may have very undesir­able consequences in the future. A report from the Na­tional Bureau of Eco­nomic Research in 2003 found that for every dollar in­crease in state spending per pupil, property val­ues increased $20 in overall housing. Meanwhile, AAPS sees its expendi­tures rise annually, while it continually looses the funding to keep up with the cost.

“Just cutting expenditures will not solve this structural problem,” said interim AAPS superintendent Robert Allen in a Powerpoint on the district’s website. “This will take specific state ac­tion as it pertains to revenues provided to the school districts in order to solve this problem.”

Article first published in our print edition: The Communicator Vol. 29 Ed. 6, April 29