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The resignation of the AAPS Superintendent makes me reflect on this moment in time for the AAPS.  Our district, like many public education districts, has been through a lot lately.  The GOP effort to defund, fragment and privatize public education is a major driver of the attacks, making any leadership position in education more than challenging.  If you’re one of 40 20J districts, like AAPS, your experience with 19 years of Proposal A has been disproportionate defunding.  While we can’t measure what funding pace we should be on, if we had kept pace with inflation since then, we would have $55M more in this year’s budget.  We wouldn’t be exploring cuts at all.  We would be investing in programs for our students; putting our foundation allowance closer to the average in Massachusetts (the top-performing state for student education), but still $2K under their average investment per student.

In Ann Arbor, we’ve seen several of our administrators leave for states that are investing in education (North Carolina comes to mind, where three of our former administrators will be soon, including our recent past Superintendent).

As the 6th largest city (and district), our total compensation for the Superintendent was the 8th largest in the State of Michigan.  The base compensation was larger than our prior Superintendent’s, who left the AAPS to lead a district with 650 students and a base compensation of $210K.  Like all University-based public schools, the expectations on the superintendent are incredibly high; hence the exercise the BOE took to benchmark salaries with similar towns (median was $246K three years ago).  While I don’t know what salary range we will target, I do know that the above facts remain true.

Michigan continues to under-invested in education and has a vision of education reform that will destroy public education as we know it (paraphrasing a quote from Richard McLellan, Rick Snyder’s go to composer of education reform legislation and primary author of the Oxford Foundation report).

In Ann Arbor, we have remained committed to education.  We have passed millages when given the opportunity (aside from those that the Chair of the GOP personally invested $400K to defeat).  We have a strong economy as a result, with relatively high and sustained property values, median income, high performing schools and a highly-ranked place to live regardless of your age group.  That context leads to the opportunity that lies ahead.  Hopefully our community, and the majority of communities across our state, will require adequate funding of education so that we become the state where people want to live and work.  We would need to more than double our investment to be aligned with the top performing state on a per pupil basis.  We need to lead the way in changing our funding model to achieve adequate funding for a thriving state.

There will be a new leader in the AAPS soon.  As with any new leader, he or she will be different from the previous one.  That means change.  That means time – to have an impact, to have our community get to know the person, to adjust to a new style.  Each person has their own strengths; none matching perfectly to everything we believe we want or need.

I would ask our community to take this moment to reflect as well.  Ask what you can do to help the next person be set up for success.  Perhaps think of what might make you feel welcome and inspired if you were in their shoes – and do that.  Be part of the success of our district and community.

We all do better when we position each other for success, act like a team and a family, have each other’s backs and press hard for the betterment of the entire focus of our institution: our students.

Let’s see what we can all do to make a positive impact and work with any new leader that we hold so many high expectations of: the Superintendent of the AAPS.

In the meantime, we can all donate to the AAPSEF or the AAPS directly.  We could enable a self-imposed millage to offset the current budget gap.  That will have a big impact in keeping our district strong.



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