In March, Jazz Parks, interim superintendent of Ann Arbor Public Schools, announced that there would be a $25-million budget deficit projected for 2024. Last month, the Board of Education voted to approve a plan that would save $20.4 million through large cuts to staff, music programs and elementary-level specials classes. This vote came after several hours of public commentary from teachers, parents and students, who addressed the board, asking them to reject this plan.
Several factors contributed to the budget shortage, including $14 million in state support from last year’s budget that was misallocated to this year’s. Another factor was an increase in staff numbers combined with dropping enrollment levels. In an interview with The Michigan Daily, Jeff Gaynor, AAPS Board of Education trustee and secretary, said the increased hiring and decreased enrollment was a result of the pandemic.
“We did a lot of extra hiring in 2015-2017 when we added new programs with the idea that it would attract more students, and that went fine until the pandemic,” Gaynor said. “During the pandemic and after, we lost about 1,000 students. But the needs in the classroom were great given the conditions of being out of school for so long … people weren’t saying there’s extra people floating around — if anything we didn’t quite have enough. We didn’t want to lay people off during the pandemic because that would be a terrible thing to do to them, and we had (a need) for them.”
Since the announcement, some community members have criticized how the board has addressed the budget deficit. Stacey Ebron, an AAPS parent and member of the Ann Arbor School Parents Intent on Racial Equity, told The Daily she felt troubled that the budget shortfall was allowed to occur and by the lack of transparency from the board.
“As soon as the $14 million error was found, the public should have been notified,” Ebron said. “It should not have taken several months for this information to become public. I wish that they had had appropriate oversight and auditing practices in place so that we didn’t end up in this position.”
In an interview with The Daily, Daniel Crowley, a Forsythe Middle School teacher, said he felt the board’s decision to enact layoffs before fully explaining the budget deficit felt rushed and required a more thorough explanation to the public.
“In March, one of these first board meetings, the board tried to rush a vote to approve layoffs before providing any justification or evidence outside of one consultant’s slideshow that mass layoffs would be necessary,” Crowley said. “The board’s first priority upon receiving that information should be not only to demand more information and clarification but then to bring that back to their stakeholders in a way that’s digestible for them.”
Since the announcement in March, the board has hosted several meetings and panels open to the public to inform the community about the budget cuts and to receive community input. In an interview with The Daily, one AAPS employee, who wished to remain anonymous for fear of professional retribution, said they believed the district has previously been unclear on what specific resources the budget is being used for.
“We’ve been asking for more transparency because there’s limited information that is put out to the public in terms of where all the (money is) going at any given time,” they said. “Even when they do publish line item budgets, the categories are pretty big sometimes, like ‘extra support,’ and nobody has any idea what extra support means.”
Jake Engels, Scarlett Middle School teacher and Ann Arbor Educators Association member, told The Daily groups such as the AAEA have been hosting events to inform community members about the projected layoffs.
“There have been lots of informational pickets before and after school,” Engels said. “We’ve really tried to get the word out about what’s going on to the community and families have been really wonderful. I think that they know that these cuts affect teachers and educators but they also affect students and families really closely.”
One major budget cut, the reductions to staff and teaching assistants’ salaries, has troubled many community members and sparked protests in the weeks between the budget release and the vote. The budget plan outlined a mass layoff of 6% of all AAPS staff, including almost 100 teachers. Engels told The Daily he predicts the TA pay cuts, in particular, will disproportionately affect students who need extra support in the classroom.
“We’re just really disappointed to see pay cuts coming to people who do the most work that is most directly interacting with students who have some of the greatest need for accommodation and for direct support,” Engels said.
Engels also explained the AAEA’s firm belief that layoff and pay cuts should not impact staff working directly with students and should instead be focused towards high level administrators.
“What we really want is cuts to happen at the top and for TAs and teachers to have their pay and positions protected,” Engels said. “If positions need to be cut, or pay needs to be cut, it should come from the highest levels of pay, where cuts will go further because salaries are larger and also where people are more directly involved in the creation of this crisis in the first place.”
AAPS’ quality music education is important to many community members — Pioneer High School’s band was named the top music department on a national level twice. As a result, many people are upset about the proposed budget plan’s job cuts to music program co-directors for classes of under 100 students. The public disapproval at the meeting Tuesday was clear, as over 50 of the 200 public comments were simply, “All AAPS deserve fully staffed, comprehensive music education.”
Gaynor said these cuts would be detrimental to the way the AAPS music programs operate.
“There’s an unlimited number of students in those classes,” Gaynor said. “The contractual agreement was, we’ll take as many students as want to take these classes. But in return, we want a co-teacher — another certified music teacher to help with the kids who need help and to do various other things. These aren’t just assistants, they’re trained teachers that do vital jobs.”
Public Health junior Sarah Lee, a former AAPS student, participated in the music program at Huron High School. She told The Daily in an interview how important the co-directors were to her music education.
“Hearing about the budget cuts for Huron Music Program’s associate directors has profoundly affected how I perceived AAPS leadership’s opinion of the music program,” Lee said. “I have witnessed firsthand the care and intense devotion they dedicate to their programs. For AAPS leadership to carry through with this curt decision has been heartbreaking for me.”
Stacey Pakela, AAPS parent and former Pioneer Band board member, told The Daily in an interview she believes music programs help students develop important life and professional skills.
“You learn professionalism, you learn showing up, you learn teamwork,” Pakela said. “You learn how to lead, but also when to fall back. You learn courage and bravery because you have to be able to play in front of people, sometimes by yourself. If you do a solo, you learn confidence and poise because that’s part of what is represented when you’re on the stage.”
Another component of the budget plan that garnered community outrage is the elimination of world languages from the elementary school curriculum. Ebron stressed the importance of world language education from a young age.
“It’s a really short-sighted move because we’re trying to attract new students to the district at the same time we’re cutting the kind of programming that parents want to see, and that research shows improves kids’ performance in reading and math,” Ebron said.
Pakela expressed her sadness at the fact that these budget cuts will inevitably hit students the hardest.
“I appreciate this is really tough from all sides, but probably the thing that’s the hardest to feel and to understand is that the kids are the ones that are going to be impacted the most,” Pakela said. “Obviously the teachers that lose their jobs or that are put in difficult positions of being stretched even thinner is going to be a challenge, but I just hate to see these kids lose what they’re going to lose.”
Daily Staff Reporter Lyra Wilder can be reached at lyrawild@umich.edu.
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