CANDIDATE INTERVIEW: Ann Arbor Board of Education Incumbent: Christine Stead
CHRISTINE STEAD IS the Vice President of the AAPS Board of Education. She comes to her interview dressed conservatively. She is not an Ann Arbor Birkenstock Board Bohemian. She is warm, smooth—not smarmy—in her answers and the definition of the phrase “Grace under pressure.”
Trustee Stead defends the annexation proposal: “We are in a grow or die situation” even while admitting there is no unified budget in place for what Superintendent Swift says would be the fourth largest school district in the state. She also admits she has no idea what the net recurring annual revenue for the AAPS would be if the annexation were to be approved by voters.
Stead talks about the district’s “growth strategy.” She doesn’t back away from schools of choice even as it’s described as shaking down the Ypsilanti Public School District for its lunch money by stealing students.
“Those parents are making a choice for their children,” she says, when asked how schools of choice is not exploiting surrounding districts.
Stead talks about the achievement gap: “I would say that the programs we have in place are starting to work toward closing the achievement gap.” She admits that she doesn’t support spending the same amount of money in each of the district’s schools—to bridge the achievement gap.
“I don’t want to spend the same amount per child in every school. Our roll is to make children succeed,” Stead explains. “We don’t come out with the number of how much we spend per student at individuals schools.”
Trustee Stead is also a fan of differentiated instruction. Differentiated instruction, according to education researcher and author Carol Ann Tomlinson is the process of “ensuring that what a student learns, how he or she learns it, and how the student demonstrates what he or she has learned is a match for that student’s readiness level, interests, and preferred mode of learning.”
At the moment, testing at the elementary level for differentiated instruction happens only at the Open School. Stead hopes to see the program spread throughout the district.
Trustee Andy Thomas donated $400 to Stead’s campaign Trustee Deb Mexicotte donated $100 and Trustee Irene Patalan gave $20. She has taken in $3,985 in cash and $3,616 in in-kind donations.
Ms. Stead a lot of this is guesswork pure and simple. I understand you have to project income and expenses but the math is simple. Whitmore Lake will get $2 million dollars and Ann Arbor will benefit from $400 dollars while paying the entire amount of the new tax. This is not an equation that works for me. My taxes rose more than 10 percent this year from the AAATA millage. That’s not your fault, but $20 here and $150 there adds up. Thank you for commenting, I appreciate hearing your thoughts.
Development of a line-by-line budget would be part of the work over the next year so that when the annexation is official (July 1, 2015) there is a budget in place. That budget must include work that has not been done yet: development of new programs that resonate with the community and AAPS. We have looked at budget at a higher level to understand what savings are likely, as is prudent with a situation where we are awaiting voter approval before investing more time on this particular opportunity.
There is a significant opportunity to win back the 25% of student enrollment lost in Whitmore Lake over the past five years if we can develop programs that families are excited about. I have confidence that our administrative leadership team, led by Dr. Swift, can accomplish such program development.
Christine, thanks very much for the additions. As for the clarification, you did, indeed, have an idea of the gross revenue and ballparked the net revenue as the result of the annexation at $400-$500K.
What has voters concerned (and we talked about this, as well) is the fact that a line item budget for the combined districts has never been shared with the public. A former school board member suggested that such a document would not be difficult to produce since the WL district’s annual revenue is $10M as opposed to AAPS and its $175M annual budget.
Basing business decisions on projected “growth” is common. Real estate speculation is just that, speculation. Developers who suggest annexation could spur development is speculation. I’m hearing folks in the AAPS district (including Dr. Roland Zullo, a candidate for the BOE) point to shrinking projected enrollments.
Thanks for spending the time to talk about these important issues!
Sorry – one more item for clarification:
We discussed testing that is used to assist with differentiated instruction. Currently that is accomplished through the NWEA test, which is administered across our elementary schools. Ann Arbor Open was mentioned as the only middle school with that in place, since this is a K8 program. We have started a new K8 STEAM program this year; I anticipate this will be the second middle school to have this test, which is used in almost every other district in Washtenaw County to help implement differentiated instruction. Differentiated instruction is part of a means to achieve our strategic plan objective of developing personalized learning plans.
Thanks!
Pat – thank so much for taking the time to conduct these interviews! I appreciate your work on behalf of our community.
There are a couple of areas I would like to clarify:
I have a very good idea of the revenue AAPS would receive if annexation is approved by scenario. While these options require more work from other parties (legislators, Treasury, etc.), the scenarios are this: 1) we have been awarded $1.4M from the state in a 22G grant for annexation-related costs; 2) There is a $100 increase per student applied to the weighted average new foundation allowance that we believe will yield $1.7M in new recurring revenue with the current student enrollment figures should they stay the same; 3) HB5848 would close the $5 gap incurred through the weighted average of foundation allowances; however, we expect a friendly amendment would be applied to increase that to $50 per student, yielding another almost $1M annually for the AAPS. We also estimate that $500,000 in savings would be allow for more investments in new programs, while bringing staff onto a common salary schedule.
The other item I would add to is allocation of funds across our district. We have put certain programs in place based on student need. That means that the funding does vary across our district. This is done to add supports in place for students which fluctuate across our district. We are always looking at ways to close the achievement gap and provide programs and supports that are needed to address that gap.
Thanks again for taking the time with me a couple of weeks ago. I appreciate it very much!