032626 ~ Parents Demand Ann Arbor School Board to Pause Spending and Share the Budgets - Adelaide Lancaster & John Benson

Parents are demanding that the Ann Arbor School Board pause spending share the budgets they

spoke at the school board meeting last night. These parents and concerned citizens. They've

launched a petition drive demanding that the Ann Arbor Board of Education resolve the contract

dispute with teachers before a new budget is approved. And they're requesting the board not

approve any new spending until administrators release three years of detailed budgets.

Transparency is what they're asking for here.

I'm Lucy Ann Lance. This is 1290 WLBY. And two of those Ann Arbor parents are live in

studio with us organizers of this petition drive now that has some 1200 or so names on it.

A people who cited in just two days. Adelaide Lancaster. Great to have you here. So nice to be here.

Thank you. And John Benson. Welcome. Thank you. Now, John, I know you're our financial expert in

the room. So we're going to get to all of that in just a moment. But with more than 1200 signatures

already on this petition in just two days, there certainly is a lot of interest in this Adelaide.

What is prompting the petition drive? We have experienced several years of turbulence and instability

in our school district. I think parents and teachers, especially have tried really hard to partner

with the district leadership, both in central office and also the school board to get questions

and concerns resolved over those several years. And candidly, it's been a really frustrating

process. Community members do not feel like we're getting access to the information needed to

make some of these hard decisions that have already been made and are certainly on the table

in the future. So over the last couple of years, many of us have just started working with

each other. There's a tremendous amount of unity in our community around this particular issue.

And we're still had a had a disappointing response at the at the school board meeting last night.

Can you tell me that they were dismissive of you? Well, they superintendents parks indicated

that the last three years of budget were available on the website, which we are aware what's

available on the website. We are asking for more details. Many teachers need more details, former

school board members say that they need more details or needed it when they were serving.

Clearly, we need more and different kinds of information. And so one of my favorite teachers

this morning said it's clear they're still not listening to us, but we are listening and talking

to each other. John, what's missing from that? Where's the disparity and what has been released

versus what you are requesting? You know, the whole narrative here, I really would like to start

with that. And why why I got involved and started looking for other teacher, other parents concerned

about this, not just seeing and hearing anecdotes from our children in the last couple of years,

about more turnover, less certain class activities, extracurricular activities,

and then hearing at a high level a narrative that's just talking about, well, there's fewer students

and we hired a lot of teachers over the last 10 years. But we're in the context of a budget

discussion. So how much money has there been available for this budget over the same time horizon

that we're talking about? And it was interesting to me to see that before COVID in 1819,

the dollars that have come in since then total are up about 60 to 65 million dollars per year.

So that's extra money relative to those years. Dollars are up, students are down.

So you have, but you have again, but property values are up. I think this was a head scratcher for

me. I think if you're an environment or a community and you know your students are maybe

are leaving the district, but also it feels like, well, maybe revenues are down for the state.

Maybe my house value is down. My house tax, none of that is true. So we know more money

is being taxed out of all of us and property tax-wise in the state. So there should be a good amount

of offset to handle any changes in kids coming and going from your district. And by the way,

it's about five or six percent as a number of kids that have apparently left the school. And yet

the money is up 25 to 30 percent. And don't we want to know why they left? I'd like to know

what is driving that. We hear an in a meeting, you know, just in the last week or so,

Superintendent Parks was asked that particular question by parents. And what was provided to us

was because of the fact that APS stayed closed during the COVID year. My family has only lived here

since 2021. And we have seen mass exodus since then, since the schools have been reopened.

So this is not this is a this is a deep issue as a cultural issue within our district. It's a

structural issue within our district. It cannot alone be attributed to COVID. And I think that

that is to John's point, we get very unsatisfactory narrow answers to important community questions

that we ought to all be grappling with. So there was a budget shortfall a couple of years ago,

though. Right. But that is after a large windfall of money was given for COVID assistance.

So there was one time dollars. That was one to one time dollars. It seemed to be spent on

multi-year basis for things that we don't have visibility into. Again, if you look at the line

items that are that are made available, which is only about 10 or 12 categorized by more or less

direct to pupil assistance and more central services, you look across those categories. We can

do that from 2018, 19 up to current. We can see that the total money in is about 25% higher.

But it is pretty interesting to look in some of those sub categories and see that allocations are

not symmetric there. There are direct to served direct to pupil services. There are only up 15 and

20% from what can be seen at that that major category level. Meanwhile, there's some other

services, central services that don't look like they are direct to students that are up 40 to 70%

of the same way. So I was going to ask you where do you think the what the money is going in one

thing. Again, this is where you have you don't want to jump to any conclusions here. This is where

transparency enables the right discussions. And that's where we can find where balancing true

balancing needs to occur. There certainly has to be some sort of commitment and understanding

if there is less demand for total teacher account on the one hand, that may be true. But then

what is the commitments and responsibilities on other services that come out of this same

budget? Why are they going up so high and others going down? That's where you need to be able to

look at these underlying details. And you don't have those answers. We don't have those answers.

But the district used to provide this level of detail. So there are available in the library archives

are budgets that go up through 2010 that had a lot more meaningful detail to that was available,

publicly available to this community and still is. So we have a retrospective of what the

district used to share. And now we have very scant information and every attempt to engage

meaningfully, productively and to ask for what is needed has been rebuffed. And all of this in the

context of the teacher's contract, which we still don't have, they're going to be meeting later

today, I understand. But you have the teachers being asked for more concessions. They are being

asked to fund their own raises again. They were promised a raise, which was not budgeted for

and therefore not given. And this has happened over and over and over again. They've been

excellent at sharing the data over the last 15 years of what it's like to be employed by this

district and how much money they've lost on the on on the whole as being employed and being a

long-term employee here. Do you think there is mismanagement in the Ann Arbor Public Schools with

these funds? I think it's impossible to say, but I do think that that is highly likely that the

community is not aligned with what the budget priorities are. It could be, right? We don't know.

I don't I don't think that there's something nefarious that is happening, but we are hearing again

and again from the community and from teachers about what the educational priorities are. And we

have no way to see whether the budget is reflecting that. We are talking with two parents who are

very concerned about the budget, the spending, and the lack of a teacher's contract in the

Ann Arbor Public Schools, Adelaide Landscaster and John Benson. All right, so the the residents,

the taxpayers, the parents, they may not understand what's going on here. They may be requesting this,

but they vote in the trustees. Where is the school board in all of this?

Are they not asking the same questions you parents are?

It does not appear so. I think it's a really good question. I think it has been incredibly

frustrating. Several of the new school board members were elected on campaigns of transparency

and community engagement. I remember that. In my experience and the experience of hundreds of

parents that I've been talking to, that is not happening. I think that it is very hard to be a

lone voice. And so perhaps extending some generosity, perhaps that is what some of our school board

members are are feeling. But it is also a cultural issue. It is hard to change the culture of an

institution. And the dynamic for a very long time has been that central office ass and the board says,

yes. I fully believe a lot of this has to do with the change in media as well. They're they're

unfortunately aren't there isn't the skill set out there right now in our community. And

quite frankly, nationally for people to go in and dig into these issues, forcing

educational institutions, governmental institutions to be transparent and to have to do these

kinds of things. And that is part of the problem here. All the more reason why I think the drive that

the parents are doing right now is so important. It's sad, but it's important. And I don't know

any other way to bring this to light if what you're saying is true. Yeah, we have to be able to

centralize more of the critical information to have good discussions and to feel that

the details are being addressed. The details are important. We can handle looking at the details.

You look at these budgets and they're given one year at a time. They don't show trends from one

year to the next. What's up? What percentage? What's down? What percentage? A lot of times it's just

talked about, you know, in absolute dollars of one area or another, which of course one of the

major spends is teachers. And so if all you're going to do is talk about total dollars, but not

percent trends, when there's money coming in, you're not really giving the right picture on

how you're trending. When you're reading anecdotes, and I read one last night of teachers saying

that the largest raises have been two and a half, three percent tenured over 20 or 30 years.

I don't know if that's true or not. But again, we have 25 percent more money than we did five

years ago. Those two things do not seem to align those statements. And this is, again, where you're left

to sort of as parents, you're left to kind of cobble together these little interviews and

and you know, one off, you know, media articles when these types of things could easily be made

available in the budgets. Yeah. Sure. So it's not such a, you know, opaque argument. I agree

through a whole heartedly. There's been a great change in how institutions handle these kinds

of things over the last decade, maybe 15 years, where a lot of this is done in

a house. I used to work for the city of Ann Arbor as well. And I know how this works. And I have

asked jazz parks to come on this show, New Marist Times, and asked for information from the school

board and nothing, nothing because why come out and answer the questions. So if you're not going to

answer the questions, then what are you hiding? And it just bothers me greatly that we can't have

more transparency. To be honest with you, I don't really care what the answers are. I want to hear

it from them. And I want to know so that that voters have the right to make the, the good decisions

when they go into that voting booth on who is going to be in charge of their tax dollars, right?

Yes. Yes. And I like, I think at this point, the community is angry, right? And anger is a very

uncomfortable emotion. My favorite activist Valerie Korr offers, though, that it is a justified

emotion to something that you love or someone that you love being threatened. And at this moment,

we have the, not just the childhood, but the future of 15,000 students, the, the viability of our

entire community and the livelihoods of the 2000 people, the adults that are caring for our

children every single day. All of that is at stake. There is a lot of worry and concern and a lot

to be really angry about in this moment. And we are not being met in a productive way. And it's

really, really hard for our community. Adelaide and John are two of the organizers. There are other

people involved with this. And they are requesting that, that the Board of Education does two things.

First, that the Board must not approve any new spending until district leadership releases

three years of detailed budgets, specifically 2324, 2425 and 2526. They say, stop asking us what we

would cut without sharing details of what we spend. Stop approving programs, subscriptions and

equipment with no input from teachers and with no plan for long term financial solvency in place.

Second, you must resolve the contract dispute with the teachers before a new 2627 budget is approved

to ensure adequate compensation is in place. Stop budgeting for everything else, then see what is

left over for our teachers who are the backbone of every classroom in the school district. Our central

administration seems to be the only constituent in this system that is well compensated and well

cared for. We should be accountable to our students and educators first and foremost. And to that,

they dismiss you. They say it's available.

You know, we need to get another layer lower in this. I mean, it's just how many ways can we

say it or ask for it? And in the long run, we hope that everybody realizes that is for the best.

It is, it is, it will, it will help your budgeting process. I have no doubt about it. It will

help the transparency and negotiations that you have. There is no doubt about it. And it will help

you sense check as you are penciling in new expenditure ideas and new budgeting frameworks.

Because when you know you're releasing a little bit more in trend and transparency each year,

it will have you double check some things. And frankly, that could have helped understand

this latest issue, which was receiving a lump sum basically amount in one year and probably over

allocating it to multi-year projects. That's usually how these things happen. And so again,

transparent numbers, transparent budgeting, it should be seen as a two-way help as a two-way

street. You know, it can be painful the first time because you feel like some things may be shown

that haven't been shown before, but you have to look at the big picture. It would also go a very

long way in beginning to restore some trust, which our community does not have right now. We

cannot trust that the people who are making decisions have the information that they need to make

those decisions because they cannot articulate it to us. They cannot engage in conversation with

us. They cannot answer questions or they refuse to. It's one or the other. Either can't or they

are refusing to. And they wonder why students are leaving. And they wonder why students are leaving.

They wonder why teachers are leaving, even though we are clearly telling them. Also, it has been

let we have been put on warning or notice the big hard decisions are coming. It is not sustainable

the way that our current funding structure works, that our current district works. We know that

painful times are ahead. How is our community supposed to meaningfully engage in that process?

And be part of it. And be part of it if we don't have the information that we need.

You write on your petition drive both the bond and the general fund are perilously low.

Our teachers are working without a contract after long-awaited raises were reneged.

Teachers continue to experience dramatic rises in health care costs. I have a teacher in my

neighborhood. Boy, she is just struggling with that. She doesn't know how she's going to pay for

it. Construction for much needed school rebuilding has been halted. Why is that? Because the bond

fund is so low, they can't afford the the plans that were initially made. And yes, there are a

lot of global factors at play. There's a state education budget that has that over the last couple

of decades has become unfavorable to communities like Ann Arbor. We we send out more money than we

get back. All of these things are true and yet they don't have to be determinant. This doesn't have

to be the way that it is. And many of our comparable districts are not having these same challenges,

especially repeated year after year after year. You also write that many key facilities and

pieces of infrastructure are outdated and unsafe. This on the heels of having that safety

meeting recently at Pioneer High School. Students and teachers are suffering the impact of cuts

made from our $25 million budget shortfall two years ago. Our fund balance continues to hover

just above the legal threshold for state monitoring and eventual or potential state takeover

under Michigan's emergency management law. Is that possible? I mean, I think that this is the big

stick that is put out there, right? It is certainly possible that if a district continues to

experience year over year financial distress and is under state monitoring that the state could

choose to step in. It has happened in other places. I've lived in other states where this has

happened. It is not a good situation. It is really terrible and detrimental to the entire community.

And yet every time questions are asked teacher asks or put forward, that is the threat that is raised.

We cannot spend more than we have, which I would agree with, right? Otherwise, we will be in

state takeover, you know, kind of situation. That is not a conversation. That is not a dialogue. That

is a conversation stopper. I have to have you back because this is an ongoing conversation and it's

very troubling. And I think that people out there that maybe weren't in tune with this, whether they

have students or their voters, they've got a lot of questions as well. And you're right. There has

been a confluence of events and situations that contribute to this, but there are other things going

on here. And all you're asking for is transparency. Yep. That's where it starts. Thank you so much.

I really appreciate it. How do people find your Google Drive petition if they would like to sign it?

I've got some QR codes, which isn't going to help on radio, but I would say ask around.

I will put the QR code up on our, when we put this on social media, on Facebook, X, LinkedIn,

and not sure if we can get it up on our streaming, but we'll find out. All right. If you are so

desired to sign this petition, we'll get that QR code for you. It's not just where you can Google

when you go on Google Drive and Google, you know, AAPS. Probably not, but it's circulating quickly.

In Facebook, we have supporters in every single one of the 32, 33 AAPS buildings. So also ask

around and create some conversation and talk to your neighbor, see if there is concerned as you are,

and you're probably going to find somebody who will send you the link. We'll see if the petition

drive gets them to come forward and be more transparent in the Annabra Public Schools.

Our thanks to Adelaide Lancaster. She's an Annabra parent community organizer, John Benson.

Also an Annabra parent. You have what three kids, John? Three kids. Little kids. Little kids. I've got

one that is going to be starting the middle in kindergarten. One is already in second grade. So,

you know, I'm pipelining to be in these schools for the next decade plus. How about you, Adelaide?

I have a high schooler and two middle schoolers. All right. So this is very concerning. We love

the teachers in the community here. We have the right people on the side. We just need to see what's

going on. Kind of agree more. And I think that needs to get answered. In the fact you're demanding

it is so very important. We'll see if it moves the needle. Thank you so much to both of you.

Thank you. Thank you. I'm Lucy Ann Lance. This is Ann Arbor's talk station, 1290 WLBY.