Around the County

Manchester has a school board election May 4th...so does Chelsea, which is also working on budget cuts...
Superintendent Robert Glass is leaving Dexter for greener pastures...(or at least, pastures closer to his Oakland County home)... yes, that is, he's going to the Bloomfield Hills school district, one of the premier districts in the state. There is also a lot of controversy over the Dexter student newspaper (I would love it if some of the students would comment about what is going on there.)
Doris Hope-Jackson did not get hired as superintendent in Harvey, Illinois...and Willow Run began an administrative hearing around Laconda Hicks...
Former Ypsilanti Superintendent James Hawkins is getting a Distinguished Service Award from the Ann Arbor-Ypsilanti Chamber of Commerce... Current Superintendent Dedrick Martin is terminating the contracts of all contract employees. That includes terminating the Ypsilanti High School principal and, I believe, the East Middle School principal. On the surface that makes sense (in that there will be layoffs of teachers, too, and these are former staff who retired and came back in contract positions) but on the other hand, there is some implication in this article that Martin might be hiring an old friend--technically not nepotism, but there is the appearance of something funky going on--perhaps because the annarbor.com article says that they have narrowed the Ypsilanti principal hiring choice down to two people but the person that Martin knows has already quit his job...and no, all I know is what I read in the "papers." It sure is confusing though!
Saline's got layoffs...Ann Arbor's got layoffs...
There's a great article about the last AAPS board meeting from Jennifer Coffman in the Ann Arbor Chronicle. Considering the number of new board members on the AAPS school board (yes, you can apply for the open position now), I thought it was funny that the most recently-appointed board member--who has been on the board for all of one month--felt she needed to reassure the public that “While we’ve had a lot of change, this board works well together.” Hmmm.

Keep opposing privatization, please. I haven't gotten a single email back from my note to the Board of Education, but I hope you are having more luck! Write: boe@aaps.k12.mi.us

Search question (someone was looking for the answer to this) that I don't know the answer to: Why Manchester has decided not to join the consolidated bus transportation program. Actually, I don't even know if that is true, and I certainly don't know why. Do you?