by P.D. Lesko
During the June 2025 budget presentations to the AAPS Board of Education and the public, Superintendent Jazz Parks included a slide that showed total student enrollment between 2014 and 2024, as well as the number of FTEs employed by AAPS. The presentation shows the last four years of decreased student enrollment, and shows that while enrolling fewer and fewer students, the AAPS has continued to employ hundreds more FTEs than it did a decade ago when more students were enrolled. The AAPS 2025 FTE staff count is 1,919 and the 2024 student enrollment was 16,742. In 2014 when the AAPS enrolled 16,834 students, the total FTE staff count was 1,647.
Sup. Parks told the Board of Education members during the June 11, 2025 presentation, “The key drivers causing Ann Arbor Public Schools financial distress are loss of enrollment–1,218 fewer students over last five years, plus projecting 125 fewer students in 2025-26.”
The Superintendent also pointed out that the teacher’s union contract (2022-2025) that calls for wage and step increases costs the district $9 million annually.
One former AAPS Board of Education member attributed the budget woes to elected officials on the Board of Education not having experience in finance. “We don’t have disciplined decision makers on the Board of Education now. The people elected to be policy makers are overly influenced and controlled by staff. Basically, the members of the Board of Education are not doing their job. Fiscally conservative, honest people are needed.”
In June 2024, an audit by Plante Moran confirmed that AAPS is facing a significant budget deficit. The report attributed the deficit to increased payroll costs that were approved without sufficient supporting revenue. Current Sup. Jazz Parks faces a financial mess created by former Superintendent Dr. Jeanice Kerr Swift and the Board of Education members who served between 2017-2022. The only Board member remaining from that time is Susan Baskett.
“Unstable” State Funding And Rising Expenditures
Despite reducing total FTEs employed by 208 to close a $20 million deficit in 2024, the fact remains that AAPS still employs hundreds of FTEs hired by former Sup. Dr. Jeanice Kerr Swift between 2017-2022 without sufficient supporting revenue. The chances that the AAPS will receive significantly more funding from either state or federal sources over the next four years is slim. In her June 11, 2025 presentation, Sup. Parks called state funding “unstable.”
Between 2020 and 2025, the AAPS operating budget rose from $272,492,439 to $314,285,983, an increase of 14 percent. The AAPS 2025-2026 budget reflects an increase in local revenue (revenue from property taxes) from $111 million to $115 million. This modest increase is undercut by a $7.56 million loss of state revenue.
School districts whose finances are sliding into deficit are flagged by the Michigan Dept. of Education and the Michigan Dept. of Treasury for warnings and one-on-one help, and if a deficit occurs, intensive oversight, including the requirement that the school district submitting a Deficit Elimination Plan to the Michigan Dept. of Education. The 2023-2024 AAPS budget elicited a June 2024 letter from the Michigan Dept. of Treasury in which Sup. Jazz Parks was told the Michigan Dept. of Treasury projected that AAPS would be in deficit within two years. The AAPS 2025-2026 budget shows officials increased spending from $306.3 million in 2024 to $314.2 million in 2025, but managed to project a modest increase in the fund balance from 5.87 to 5.88 percent of total expenditures.
The State of Michigan requires school districts to maintain a reserve fund equal to 5 percent of total expenditures. Since 2012, AAPS has four times slid below that 5 percent threshold, including in 2022 and 2023. While the statewide school average fund balance has risen to 27 percent of total expenditures, the AAPS fund balance has fallen from a high of 10 percent in 2015 to a low of 2.2 percent in 2023.
According to data from the Michigan Dept. of Treasury’s Financial Health Status Report from June 2024 (below), and 2024 student enrollment data from AAPS, between 2020 and 2024, AAPS student enrollment fell by 1,218 students. This translated into a loss of millions in per pupil revenue.
U-M International Student, Staff and Faculty
The present financial slide began in 2020, but Sup. Dr. Jeanice Kerr Swift’s budgets did not reflect the loss of students and the loss of the corresponding per pupil revenue. Instead, expenditures rose from $259,688,138 in 2020 to $314,285,983 in 2025 (under current Superintendent Jazz Parks).
Any decrease in the international student enrollment and international faculty hiring at the University of Michigan could also impact AAPS enrollment. While the 2025 numbers have not been released, the University of Michigan enrollment data show that in 2024 there was an 11 percent increase in applications from international students. U-M hosted 13,718 international students, scholars, faculty and staff in 2024. Those individuals had 808 dependants.
In 2024, approximately 15 percent (864) of U-M’s total 5,779 academic staff members were international staff.
In her June 2025 presentation, Sup. Parks highlighted the worst case budget scenario: “AAPS would be using $10 million of its Fund Balance which would leave the district with approximately $8 million of ending Fund Balance which equates to 2.5 percent which is below the 5 percent State requirement.”
The 2025-2026 AAPS budget book includes this: “The current AAPS Board Policy requires the budgeted year-end fund balance of the General Fund to be targeted to fall within the following ranges of the preceding year’s expenditures from the general fund: 8% – 15% for FY 2025-26.” In 2024-2025, the total actual AAPS expenditures were $306,359,914. The 2025-2026 projected fund balance of $18,484,728 is 6 percent of the preceding year’s expenditures.
AAPS spokesman Andrew Cluely was contacted for a comment on the 2025-2026 budget, but has not yet responded.
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