The Tower, the Grosse Pointe South student newspaper, ran an editorial this past week taking the school board to task for not being “frugal” enough “before making salary cuts.”
As treasurer of the Board of Education for the last two years, if the public feels we haven’t been frugal or that the school board is somehow unilaterally “making salary cuts,” I want to be explicit about a few things.
First and foremost, I encourage everyone to review my presentation on the financial state of the district, accessible here but this is the “short short” version:
- As the state has cut K12 spending, our district operates annually with $9.7 million (10%) less than we did three years ago.
- State mandated retirement costs us $4 million more per year than just three years ago.
- We have reduced over 85 full time equivalent jobs in the district in three years, a 10% reduction.
- Annual non-employee costs are down annually by nearly $2 million per year from 2008 levels, having been reduced every year for the last five years.
The Tower narrative rings the tired bell that school boards and employees should fight with each other. The contracts we negotiated put an end to this kind of archaic thinking. The contracts pre-negotiated a standard by which we would operate within our means. The contracts delivered substantial benefits that came with risks.
Need I remind us all of the tableau at school board meetings while this contract was being negotiated? The rooms were filled with angry people, a large percentage of whom called the Board out for having too rich a level of fund equity. That money was to be spent on education, was the call to action. I’ve got news for you. That’s exactly where it went.
- We maintained staffing levels so as to not increase class sizes or diminish our educational program.
- We are paying on average $5,400 more per employee every year for their retirement plan than we were just three years ago. We have 875 employees, by the way.
- We funded a $3.4 million early retirement incentive that was strongly advocated for by our employees and their representatives.
- We added two new salary steps at the top end of our teacher direct compensation salary grid that delivered raises to over half of our teachers who were previously capped. Meanwhile all the others continue to progress through step and lanes.
If the Board “overspent” let it be understood that our most significant incremental investments driving fund equity down have directly benefited our current and former employees via more jobs, higher wages, and higher retirement benefits/packages.
All of the above was incredibly expensive and the main reason fund equity will drop below 10%. But even more significantly, this was all properly negotiated. In that process, the Board was skeptical of our ability to sustain these cost increases. The employee bargaining units pointed to fund equity and said, we think you can.
To break the impasse, the Board agreed to fund these requests – with this single provision: If fund equity drops below 10%, we need to take some of it back in this certain formulaic manner. And our employees overwhelmingly agreed. In this respect, the Board is not “making salary cuts” as has been charged. Rather the Board and the employee bargaining units are merely following the terms of the contract that were negotiated.
As to the charge that the Board has “no incentive” to save money recall that the Board manifested such an incentive when we were negotiating. We were deeply concerned about adding these costs, but the 10% clause provided the balance we needed as a district. This WAS the check and balance that we are now charged with “being a little off.”
In the budgeting process this year I anticipate making formal requests from the Board of our employee bargaining units to receive their cost reduction ideas. These ideas will be evaluated. I for one will look through this simple lens in doing so: Does this change make our district better? If the answer is no, I will be very skeptical.
The Tower editorial aims to remind the Board or certain Board members of their role. Here’s another reminder. The Board was elected by the citizens of this community to make our district better. This is THEIR school district. I take my responsibilities in this regard very seriously.



As it relates to school funding, this news has 









