Grounds Crew Now; Teachers' Aides Next? School Board Meeting Wednesday

You might have noticed this MLive article from June 19, 2015:

Ann Arbor Schools May Privatize Grounds Crew

As noted in the article,

Ann Arbor Public Schools may privatize its grounds crew to save up to $300,000.
The district will have to lay off 13 employees if it hires four local companies to provide grass cutting, snow removal and athletic field care.
The Board of Education on Wednesday, June 17, reviewed a proposal to hire AM Service of Ann Arbor, Great Lakes Environmental Services of Whitmore Lake, JCC Design of Whitmore Lake and Superior Lawn Care & Snow Removal of Ypsilanti to do the work.
"We believe this model of using a number of contractors to deliver services to parts of the district will help meet real time needs and increase agility in keeping grounds in really good shape," said Superintendent Jeanice Swift. (Emphasis added.)

This item will be voted on at Wednesday's (June 24th) board meeting.

Side Note:

Another item on the June 24th agenda will be the "revised" Draft Policy 5060, which addresses parents who refuse to have their children take state tests.

Here is the amended policy--do you think it is better? It does not call out any particular students. But it still maintains that the tests are mandatory, and it says the board may take "any additional actions," which I think is pretty broad.

But back to my other point.

The rumor that I have heard floating around--I have not seen any written documentation (but also I haven't looked for any)--is that the district is looking into outsourcing all of the teachers' aides in the district. Presumably that would mean making it so that another company (possibly PESG, which does the substitute teachers) would hire all of the teachers' aides and supply them to the district.

UPDATED 6/24/2015--response to this rumor from David Comsa, Deputy Superintendent of Human Resources and Legal Services: "There is no chance of AAPS outsourcing teaching assistants. First, the district is actively bargaining with the Paraeducator unit, which includes teaching assistants. Second, state case law considers most teaching assistants to be protected from outsourcing."

Notice the trend? The goal is to make it so that the number of employees the district is directly responsible for is as small as possible. There is a strong financial incentive for this--for all school district employees, the district is responsible for retirement costs (I believe the costs are above 25% of payroll, and the district is unable to control the amount they are required to pay--that is set by the state). It also gives the district a lot more flexibility.

However, there is certainly also a very troubling aspect to this as well. People lose their jobs, and there is no guarantee that they will be re-hired, or that their pay rates will be similar...even if they are, they will lose the opportunity for a state pension. It also distances the district from tough personnel decisions (after the initial layoff)--the district just tells the other company to do X with Y amount of money--if that leads to difficult working conditions or less pay for certain people--it is separated from the decisions of the district itself.

I recognize that the district, per pupil, gets about the same amount of money as we got thirteen years ago--and there-in lies the conundrum. On the other hand--although theoretically the services should not change, in reality I hear people complain all the time about the decline in custodial services, the decline in food service...I don't really know if the decline is real or imagined.

Can you imagine a time where the district outsourced the teachers? (Just. Asking. I have not heard of any plans to do so--and I do not mean to start any panic about that--but that is what some charter schools do.)

If you have feelings about any of this, you should share them with the Board of Education: boe@a2schools.org (note new, shorter, email address!), ideally before the school board meeting on June 24th.



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Five Thoughts About Labor Day and the First Day of School

1. Read about the history of Labor Day here. Remember that in the late 1800s, the average worker worked 12-hour days, 7 days a week.

2. In most public schools in Michigan, we have unionized teachers, custodians, secretaries and principals. If you think any of them are paid too much, get too much time off, have pensions or other benefits that are too high, just remember. . . they didn't negotiate those contracts by themselves. There was somebody. . . administrators and school board members, generally. . . on the other side of the negotiating table.

3. For a lot of schools, the first day of school is tomorrow, and in Michigan, that is going to be the first full day of kindergarten in many school districts, including Ann Arbor. Between the time that my oldest child started school and now, kindergarten has gotten much less play-ful and much more work-ful. Let's hope that full day kindergarten will still be fun for kindergartners.

4. That reminds me of a story:

When my (oldest) son was in first or second grade, he never seemed to want to read at home.
One day I said to him, "Why don't you want to read? Reading's fun!"
And he said to me, "Look mom. Maybe someday reading will be fun. But right now, it's work!"

School--it's a day of labor for both students and teachers. But that doesn't mean it can't also be fun.


5. Where I grew up, school always started the day after Labor Day. You might know that the Jewish New Year (Rosh Hashana) also starts in September. As a Jewish kid, growing up, it never ever made sense to me that the "New Year" started in December. Clearly, the New Year started in September. I hope this new school year is a good one for you and for your kids. I foresee a lot of battles ahead. . . I hope to be writing more about testing. . . charter schools. . . arcane details of contracts. . . and more. But time presses, so we'll see how the blogging goes. I had told a friend of mine that when September starts I always feel like a Mack Truck has hit me. [She found that to be a helpful comment, because it validated her feeling. Maybe it will help you too.]

Mack AC-model flatbed delivery truck from the Petersen Automotive Museum

Labor Day: $245,000

Today is Labor Day, a time to remember all workers.
Today, I'd like to thank our teachers, paraprofessionals, administrators, custodial staff, bus drivers, after-school support, administrative staff, and all other workers who make our schools run smoothly.

Tomorrow, school starts, and in the Ann Arbor schools, Dr. Patricia Green--our new superintendent--has her "first day of school." (Yes, she started in the summer.)

To date, a lot of attention has been paid to her salary: $245,000--and I agree with the many of you who say that she's being paid too much.

But I'd ask you to step back a moment, and really try to judge her on the work that she does in the coming year, and not on her salary. Even though I know that is hard to do. Her job is hard enough--don't make it harder because of what she is being paid.

I ask you to do this because of one simple fact: Patricia Green did not set the parameters of her salary--the school board did, at the suggestion of a national search firm. If you don't like what they did, then tell them that; and if you don't like their larger body of work, go ahead and vote in new school board members in November. Tell the remaining school board members why you chose to vote for new people.

And I'd like you to imagine this:
Suppose that you were working as an engineer for $75,000 a year, and you decided to apply for a job that you thought would pay a little bit more--perhaps $90,000 a year--and might offer you a new challenge. Plus, you were already eligible for retirement at your old job. When you make it to the round of interviews, you find out that if you are hired, they want to pay you $125,000. They think that it will be hard to give you raises in the next few years, so they would rather pay you up front.

What exactly would you do? Would you say,
A. "Oh no, I think you should only pay me $90,000 a year?"
Or would you say,
B. "Yes, I can work for $125,000."

Dr. Green chose B, and I think that most of us would have done so as well.

Do judge Patricia Green on her body of work.

To you, Dr. Green, I have these words of advice: Really listen to your constituents--a lot of the time they know more of what is going on than you will.  Show up at meetings and be present in the community.  Putting up videos and sending deputies to community meetings is no substitute for your presence. Although I had occasional disagreements with Todd Roberts and with interim superintendent Robert Allen (mostly I thought they did very well), I really appreciated that they were out in the community, coming to curricular events and parent meetings, budget meetings filled with critical parents and teachers, sporting events and events like the Science Olympiad.

The Opportunity to Give Thanks (All Hail the Thesaurus)

Please--take this week to thank a

teacher

secretary

custodian

principal

bus driver

librarian

administrator

lunch lady (or lunch gentleman)

after school staff person

before school staff person

counselor

teacher's aide

or any other school staff person whom you would like to

appreciate

laud

notice

applaud

recognize

acclaim

cheer

boost

commend

magnify

praise

recommend

plug

rave

glorify

cheer

encourage

extol

(All hail the thesaurus, provider of wondrous synonyms.)

And feel free to post your thanks, publicly, in the comments section.

Why now? It is, after all, Thanksgiving. 

Happy Thanksgiving!

Links to Make You Think

An analysis of special education issues in New Jersey. I know, it's not Michigan, but what I found especially interesting is just how variable the percentage of students diagnosed with special eduction needs is, state to state. Why?

From National Public Radio's On Point, a discussion of the ramifications of laying off so many teachers nationwide.

Tonight, while watching the Tigers game on the television, I saw an ad for Cornerstone Schools. I was curious, so I checked it out. Cornerstone Schools is a private school with a Christ-centered mission (their words, not mine) in Detroit. That's all well and good, but they have spun off two charter schools. Read this article, and you--like me--will likely worry about the division between church and state in charter schools. I don't really get it, and I don't really believe there's much separation going on here.

I generally like Kym Worthy, but jail time for missing parent-teacher conferences? Come on! Don't we have enough people in jail as it is? Let's start with offering more opportunities for parent-teacher conferences, okay?

And, as usual, Sharon Parks of the Michigan League for Human Services has a stellar blog post--in part about foster care--focused on the state budget. Is state government unraveling?