Transportation Lessons: 2010-2012

Preface

In ninth grade, I had an algebra teacher who always wore cowboy boots (I grew up in New York! That was not usual). About mistakes, he had this to say, "It's okay to mistakes. But it's preferable to make a different mistake every time."

That story is meant to say: I know that hindsight is perfect, and foresight is imperfect. So the point of this lesson is to use that knowledge to improve decision-making in the future.


Transportation Lessons: What Can We Learn? (Or: More Proof of the Importance of Evalutation)

Our object lesson is the transportation consolidation that took place over the past two years. You may recall that back in 2009-2010, the Ann Arbor schools (and Ypsilanti and Willow Run) each had their own buses and bus drivers. And all of the county's districts were looking for ways to save money--including on transportation. After much thought, Dexter went to a "one-tier" bus system (all schools start and end at the same time of day, so they can do one run through a neighborhood instead of two or three). Lincoln bus drivers took major pay cuts in order to avert consolidation.

Ann Arbor bus drivers also offered major concessions as an alternative to consolidation. But remember--Ann Arbor is the biggest district in the county, and it is right in the middle of the county. I think the school board felt that if Ann Arbor didn't choose consolidation, then consolidation couldn't work. That, by itself, brought some additional pressure to the Ann Arbor schools.

However--the biggest incentive, by far, was the money savings that were promised. As described by deputy superintendent Robert Allen in April of 2010, in an annarbor.com article that David Jesse wrote,

Hiring a private company to run the district’s busing operations would cost $7,019,214, said Robert Allen, the district’s deputy superintendent for operations. Joining with five of the county’s other traditional districts to form a consolidated busing system would cost the district $6,578,274.

Both those options are cheaper than the district’s current busing system, which costs $8,718,669, Allen said.

In other words, the savings were estimated to be over two million dollars! [I think it was understood that the savings would be a little bit less if fewer districts joined in--which was, in fact, what happened--and in a later article (October 2011, Ann Arbor Chronicle) Robert Allen says the final savings were estimated to be closer to $1.5 million. Still, that is nothing to sneeze at.] It was understood that the bulk of savings would come from reduced staffing costs, despite the fact that the estimates were based on the idea that service levels would remain the same. The reduced pay for bus drivers was ostensibly based on a market rate study.

So on the one hand, I don't blame the school board officials and the school administrators for getting a little bit starry-eyed at the thought of saving all that money!

On the other hand, there were some warning signs that promises from privatization and consolidation don't always turn out all that well. 

Somebody Evaluated Food Service Privatization, But Did We Pay Attention?

Food services had been privatized in Ann Arbor a few years earlier. Had the savings from that approached the promised savings? Not according to University of Michigan researcher Roland Zullo, who is also an Ann Arbor Public Schools parent. Prompted in part by the specter of privatization of Ann Arbor schools custodial and transportation staff, he undertook an evaluation of the food services privatization. (Earlier he had done a larger study of food service privatization.) According to this (very interesting) New York Times article (12/3/2011),

Roland Zullo, a researcher at the University of Michigan, found in 2008 that Michigan schools that hired private food-service management firms spent less on labor and food but more on fees and supplies, yielding “no substantive economic savings.” Alarmingly, he even found that privatization was associated with lower test scores, hypothesizing that the high-fat and high-sugar foods served by the companies might be the cause. In a later study, in 2010, Dr. Zullo found that Chartwells was able to trim costs by cutting benefits for workers in Ann Arbor schools, but that the schools didn’t end up realizing any savings.

[An aside: this, by the way, is consistent with the findings of the AAPS Privatization History blog post that I wrote in March 2010.]

In Zullo's March 2010 review of Ann Arbor food service (read the full report here), he reported that there were initial savings the first year, but the savings evaporated after that. And he says,

By losing their AAPS employment status, food service workers lost their state pension benefits, had their health insurance co-pays skyrocket by 500%, and lost union representation. New employees are offered wages at about $9.00 per hour.

 
It Was Consolidation, Not Privatization

But wait--the Ann Arbor school board did not choose privatization. They chose consolidation with another public entity, the Washtenaw Intermediate School District.  Employees who chose to apply for jobs with the WISD would--if rehired--be able to keep their state pension benefits, and they would be able to unionize if they wanted (in fact, they have voted to affiliate with the Michigan Education Association, or MEA).  In fact, one thing that the board appears to have taken away from the food services privatization discussion is that many people lost their pensions, and that was a bad thing. I know from conversations with board members that they saw consolidation as different from privatization, although I'm not sure that the bus drivers saw it very differently. Just read, for instance, my interview with Andy Thomas when he was a school board candidate earlier this year.

So How Has Consolidation Worked So Far?

The first problem was that only three districts agreed to consolidate.
There were quite a few service problems in the beginning, and in fact Ypsilanti ended up giving a private bus company, Trinity, a $180,000 contract in the first year, because the WISD couldn't keep up. (I still see a lot of Trinity buses in Ypsilanti, so I assume that they still have some kind of contract.)
I have heard alleged--in other words, nothing that I have substantiated--that bus drivers who were active in their unions were not re-hired.
And the WISD reported to the Ann Arbor school board, in October 2011, that turnover rates were astoundingly high--over 40%.
Most of us know that even with lower staffing costs, high turnover is going to increase costs and probably reduce service quality. High turnover requires increased training and recruiting, makes it more likely that drivers will make mistakes on routes (because they are new), and means that students are always seeing new drivers and/or substitute drivers.

Partly because of the complaints, the Ann Arbor school board asked the WISD for an evaluation of the first year (2010-2011), and it took the WISD several months into the 2011-2012 school year to provide it. If you want, you can read the full report here.

But here is the summary:
Total savings were not quite $619,000--just over 40% of the expected savings.

According to the WISD, unemployment compensation costs; higher than expected gas prices; workers' compensation claims; and a retirement rate increase were the primary reasons that the savings were so low. Aren't those things that should have been expected and included in the initial budgeting plan? It looks like we got the "pie in the sky" budget (hence the starry eyes) when we should have gotten the plain pie budget.

The report also makes clear that whereas before, many people were school bus drivers as a primary job, that has changed. For most people, these are secondary jobs now--and when they find a better job, with more hours/no-split shift/more pay, they take it and leave the school buses behind. Remember--the bus drivers did offer concessions to the district. They simply were not deemed to be enough.

The projected savings for the Ann Arbor schools for 2011-2012, according to Robert Allen, are about $1 million. But those savings are largely a function of all of the cuts that they made to busing schedules at the beginning of this year, and not of consolidation.

More recently, Ypsilanti and Willow Run have said they may completely pull out of the WISD consortium, leaving Ann Arbor as the only district in the consortium, making it not a consortium at all. I assume that is because they are not getting the savings that they expected. Should this be a shock? No.

So I was glad to see the Ann Arbor Chronicle report that in light of these changes, on January 25, 2012 the school board directed the administration to

...examine and make a recommendation on the following transportation options: improving busing within the current framework of the WISD; consolidating busing with Ypsilanti and Willow Run outside the WISD consolidation; bringing busing back into the AAPS budget with bus drivers remaining public employees; bringing busing back into the AAPS budget but privatizing bus drivers; eliminating busing entirely; or collaborating with the Ann Arbor Transportation Authority (AATA) to transport AAPS students.

Hindsight is Perfect

If we go back to the preface--hindsight is perfect.
Looking back, do I think it was a good idea to privatize? No. I think we could have gotten those same savings with salary concessions from the bus drivers and revamping the bus schedules--with much less disruption to both the school district and to the employees' lives.  (I admit it--I was always skeptical, and I wrote about that here.)
 
In fact, on June 24, 2010, I wrote that:

Regarding the teacher contract, kudos to the negotiators. It really is a creative collaboration. However--the teacher contract makes the vote to consolidate bussing--which means that workers lose their jobs with no guarantee of re-hire, or even of seniority preference in hiring--all the more disappointing. . . It is disappointing because it is clear--based on the teacher contract--that the district has the capacity to develop creative agreements that serve workers well. Yet in the case of the transportation workers, they chose not to do so.

As I read back over my notes though, I think I know why they chose not to do so. It's not simply because transportation is not considered a "core service." I think it's because transportation departments have a reputation for being difficult to run. They've got all those buses with maintenance; lots of parts, supplies, and gas; and difficulty scheduling multiple routes, special education needs, and staffing. Maybe they thought the WISD could actually do a better job--even though that turned out not to be true!


It's Better to Make a Different Mistake Every Time

And since it's better to make a different mistake every time, as we look forward to another round of budget cuts, what should be done differently?

If privatization comes up again (and I will bet that it will), what questions should the school board and administrators be asking that they didn't ask last time? Let's articulate those questions now. 

Coda
One good thing that did come out of this--although the Ann Arbor schools did not ever have a major problem with buses passing state safety inspections, the Ypsilanti and Willow Run schools sometimes did, and their pass rates have improved dramatically, as I note here. They sold the buses to the WISD for $1, and the agreement is that they will be sold back to the districts for $1 if they leave the consortium.

Save the Golden Frog! A View of the Ann Arbor Open Multicultural Fair

Sure, there's lots of hard-hitting news to be written, but I thought I'd start off, post-winter break, with a look back at the last week before winter break, and a peek at my favorite school event of the year. My favorite school event of the year is Ann Arbor Open's Multicultural Fair.
What do I like about this event?
To begin with, it is the culmination of several weeks of project-based learning for each and every class in the school.
Second, it begins with a gigantic potluck that enhances the sense of community.
Third, it is a fundraiser for the library. Families are asked to bring a potluck dish and a $10 donation, but nobody is turned away.  A lot of people come, and the event raises a couple thousand dollars for the Ann Arbor Open library every year.
And last--but not least--I really appreciate the timing of the event. Since the Multicultural Fair takes place the week before break, the entire focus of the school that last week is on the Multicultural Fair exhibits. That's right. The focus is not on Christmas. As a Jewish parent, I find this to be a huge relief--even when the fair itself takes place on one of the nights of Chanukah. (After all, there are eight nights of Chanukah.) I've been in other schools just before Christmas and the Christmas fever is a little bit overwhelming.
So this year I took some pictures (with a cell phone). They are not going to win any awards, but they will give you some of the flavor.

Some of the first and second graders were studying Malawi, and they built a village.

All of the seventh and eighth graders worked together on a spectacular exhibit around Africa.
During the event, the students took turns drumming. I did take pictures of them drumming, but since I didn't ask permission to use their photos, the only one I'm posting is where everybody is blurry:). On the far left is Papa Tito, who is an African drummer by training and who came in and worked with the students.

Here you can see the baobab tree that some students built.

I have to say that the Africa exhibit made me realize how terrible my African geography is. I do have a basic grasp of the larger countries, and I did know a lot about a few of the countries. But had I heard of Sao Tome and Principe? No, I had not. Did I know that the Second Congo War has been the deadliest war since World War II? It sounded familiar, but I couldn't tell you the reasons for the conflict. Yes, I did learn some things from the students' exhibits.


 The third and fourth graders studying Panama decided to do something about the demise of the golden frogs of Panama. There were students sitting at a table collecting donations. I took a picture of the sign.

I made a donation and I got one of these really cute bookmarks in return. Do you notice the pink tongue? And I love how that is a "corner" bookmark.

New School Lunch Standards Coming Soon!

Thanks to the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has been developing new standards for school meals. They are designed to increase fruit and vegetable consumption, decrease sodium content, cut saturated fat, increase whole grains consumption, combat childhood obesity, and more. In the proposed rules, starchy vegetables like potatoes cannot only be served in limited quantities. The standards are largely based on Institute of Medicine guidelines.

The nutrition standards for school meals would change dramatically under the new Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act. Among the proposed changes:

 ALL MEALS

• Milk: One-cup servings of unflavored milk must be 1 percent milk-fat or fat-free, and one-cup servings of flavored milk must be fat-free.
• Bread products served must be made with 50 percent whole grains. Two years after the USDA implements the nutrition regulations, all breads served must be made entirely of whole grain.

BREAKFAST

• Students must be offered one full cup of fruit at breakfast. Only half a cup could be juice, and that would have to be 100 percent fruit juice. Fruit could be replaced with vegetables.
• A meat or meat alternative, such as eggs, yogurt, or cheese, would have to be served every day. Tofu is not an approved meat alternative.
• The calorie range is 350 to 500 for elementary students, 400 to 550 for middle schoolers, and 450 to 600 for high schoolers.
• No starchy vegetables—potatoes, corn, peas, or lima beans—are allowed.
• Over the course of 10 years, schools must reduce sodium to 430 milligrams or less per breakfast for elementary students, 470 milligrams or less for middle schoolers, and 500 milligrams or less for high schoolers.

LUNCH

• Elementary and middle students must be offered a one-half cup serving of fruit every day. High school students must be offered a cup every day.
• The calorie range is 550 to 650 in elementary school, 600 to 700 in the middle grades, and 750 to 850 in high school.
• Elementary and middle school students must be offered at least one ¾-cup serving of vegetables every day; one cup for high school students.
• Starchy vegetables must be limited to a one-cup serving a week.
• A one-half-cup serving of dark-green vegetables must be offered at least once a week.
• A one-half-cup serving of orange vegetables must be offered at least once a week.
• A one-half-cup serving of legumes—black beans, black-eyed peas, garbanzo beans, green peas, kidney beans, lentils, lima beans, soy beans, split peas, and white beans—must be served once a week.
• Over 10 years, schools must reduce sodium to 430 milligrams or less per lunch in elementary school, 470 milligrams or less in middle school, and 500 milligrams or less in high school.

SOURCE: U.S. Department of Agriculture; excerpted from Education Week

The proposed rules were put out in January and you have until April 13th to send in your comments. It is spectacularly easy to send in your comments. Just click on this link, type in your name and your comments, and press send.

According to this article in Education Week, school districts are worried about the cost (what's new!) and they are also worried about whether kids will actually eat whole grains or fruits and vegetables. Predictably, nutrition groups are all for it.

Why does it matter? A lot of schools serve many, many subsidized meals to kids who get free and reduced price meals, and in addition (alert: fun factoid coming!) some students may get half their calories at school.

Things I Read Recently That I Liked

Time Magazine article on School Lunches
Blogging for Michigan post (mostly) on taxes
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society (book)
New York Times article on how to pronounce the name of the Icelandic volcano, Eyjafjallajokull
Today's Detroit Free Press article on the Kalamazoo Promise

Some Interesting Links

A tweet from DavidNGoodman (Detroit-area AP reporter) led me to this teacher blog from someone who started out in Teach For America: Not Much, Just Chillin' and to this very interesting article from the New York Times, Building A Better Teacher by Elizabeth Green. The article gives a shout-out to both the Michigan State University and University of Michigan schools of education. And I don't necessarily agree with all of the conclusions, but it is interesting to read about. The article also links to the Uncommon Schools web site (which is promotional--just a warning). I wouldn't normally link to it but I did like the teaching clips on the right hand side.

[There is a recent post on the teachers' blog Not Much, Just Chilling that talks about what this teacher gets paid as a teacher in eastern North Carolina. It struck me just how little she is getting paid, after 5 years on the job, and how low pay is in eastern North Carolina as compared to Michigan.]

Also in the New York Times, as part of a series on the impact of immigration, you can look up every school district in the country (yes, including Washtenaw County), and check out both racial/ethnic makeup and the assigned diversity index (the percent chance that two students selected randomly would belong to different ethnic/racial groups).  The key question--is diversity increasing or decreasing? The data spans 1987 to 2006, so you can really see some trends. In Washtenaw County, for 2006, Fortis Academy is #1 in diversity. Check out #2... (I had fun guessing.) I went back and looked at my hometown in a New York suburb. Racial and ethnic diversity is still every bit as low as I remembered from high school.

In graduate school in education, I often found myself disagreeing with Diane Ravitch, a leading educational thinker. So I was surprised to listen to this NPR interview with her, and find that for the most part I agreed with her. [I think she may have changed more than me. And she essentially says, "I thought this, but now I have changed my mind." Kudos to her for being willing to admit to a change of mind.]

And today, NPR has an article about the Department of Education stepping up civil rights enforcement. It's about time...

On a totally separate topic--not education, but yes, local--The Farmer's Marketer is doing a series on the various community farm/share options in the area. I tried one a few years ago but didn't like driving out to the farm every week, so I'm shopping around, and maybe you are shopping too! There are a lot more choices now.

Let's Talk About Food And Health

David Jesse's recent article at annarbor.com about a Mitchell Elementary School program to provide weekend "food backpacks," made me think it is time to say something more about food, and health.
Different schools and school districts have different feelings about how much they should help provide a safety net for students. Some schools have stepped up to the plate--for instance, Bryant/Pattengill in Ann Arbor runs a clothes closet, and the Ypsilanti Public Schools run one for the whole district. Other schools have been reluctant to jump into providing services, because the need is so great, and they don't want to be seen as a giant social service agency.

On the other hand--kids who are hungry, cold, or sick don't do very well in school. I think that those schools that try to support students' other needs are doing the right things. But remember, knowledge is power, and a lot of people who are eligible for programs don't know they are eligible. So here are a few resources. Please share them!

1. Free and Reduced Price Lunch Program (which includes breakfast): you can register for this at any time during the school year. If, for instance, you had work at the beginning of the year and wouldn't qualify, you might find that you qualify now. Ask for an application at the front office of the school your child attends. Some schools use this as a way to identify kids who qualify for other benefits/scholarships. (I've written about school lunch here.)

2. The Food Stamp application is now online. This is new, and it is great news. Spread the word. A lot of people are surprised to find out that they qualify. If you want an estimate as to whether your family will qualify, here is the link to a food stamp calculator. And here is the link to the application.

3. Similarly, you can now enroll your kids in the MIChild/Healthy Kids program with an online application. (Women 19-44 can be enrolled in the Plan First family planning program through the same application.)

4. The Regional Alliance for Healthy Schools has clinics in several local schools, including schools in Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti, and Willow Run. Check them out here.

5. Pregnant women and kids up to age 5 can be served by WIC (Women, Infants, and Children)--and that can help stretch the overall food budget. WIC also has some satellite clinics, which is helpful for people living on the edges of the county.

Trick or Treat for UNICEF

No, the millage is not the only thing going on around here, although it might seem that way sometimes.

I grew up in a New York suburb, just a train ride away from the United Nations, and every year, starting in kindergarten, we would "Trick or Treat for UNICEF."

Along with candy bags, we would carry our little orange boxes and people would give us candy AND money--mostly pennies and nickels. The next school day, we would bring that money in to be counted.

UNICEF is the United Nations Children's Fund, and it upholds the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

When my kids started trick-or-treating, I discovered that nobody around here knew from UNICEF.
Until last year. For the first time, I saw the boxes. The message is getting out.

If a kid comes to your door this year, and says, sings, or shouts, "Trick or Treat for UNICEF,"--

you know what to do.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

School Lunch

In case you missed it, there was an interesting interview with a school "lunch lady" (Jean Ronnei, Director of Nutrition and Commercial Services for Saint Paul Public Schools) on The Splendid Table this week, titled "Lunch Ladies and School Lunch Programs."

It turns out, they have about $1/meal to spend on food--which is about the same as the budget of a person on food stamps. It is pretty limiting. If you are interested in what it is like to live on a food stamps budget, and you are not poor enough to live on one, you can read about the Food Stamp Challenge here. (I should note that ICPJ's official Food Stamp Challenge--which I link to--is over, but you yourself could try it at any time. In any case, the comments are interesting.)

And especially in school districts where a lot of kids rely on free and reduced price lunches, the quality of breakfast and lunch become a big issue.

Tappan Gardens, Slow Food

Have you seen the garden at Tappan Middle School? It is on the upper field, and it is beautiful. Every school needs a garden like this, a well-tended garden that kids can work on. Yes, I took this picture of the ripening strawberries there. I believe this gardening project was inspired by Alice Waters and the Slow Foods movement. Tappan is not the only Ann Arbor school with a garden. I know, for instance, that Ann Arbor Open has a garden, a mini-greenhouse, and a gardening elective for 7th/8th graders. See this older post for more information about Ann Arbor school gardens--some of them are flowers though, not vegetables.