As taxpayers in the Grosse Pointe Public School System contemplate the continuation of millages that account for 25% of the district’s revenue, the recently published District Financial Transparency Series can be a tremendous source of information.
Five years ago our oldest daughter was about to start 2nd grade at Defer. As I am now, I could not have been happier with the care and education she was receiving. When the Defer PTO needed someone to attend a Board meeting, the topic of which was to promote the original adoption of the Sinking Fund millage, I willingly attended– eager to do what I could to help a district I was coming to really appreciate. If I only knew the ride I was in for starting that night.
Various PTO and booster groups were represented that night at Grosse Pointe South. I came away with a decent understanding of what a Sinking Fund was, but I was mainly thinking – how could the Grosse Pointe Schools be in financial trouble? I was highly skeptical. Sound familiar to you?
Skepticism can drive a variety of responses. Some get angry, other look for someone to blame. My skepticism made me curious. How were Michigan public schools funded? How did our district budget? What role did the Board play in all this? How did GPPSS’ strategy compare to other districts?
From that point 5 years ago I embarked on an odyssey to educate myself on all matters related to public school funding in Michigan and on the GPPSS budget.
It has been a long road and I’m still learning as I go along. I started by educating myself on Michigan’s Proposal A, devouring article after article. I attended every Board of Education meeting for a year before actually becoming a trustee. In my time on the Board I found found and correlated mounds of data and information that led to a massive benchmarking effort. And then some more. I could go on and on. One of my conclusions is that the common data formats generated by the state and other entities is not the most intuitive and certainly not in a way best suited to help people understand the root cause of the Michigan public school funding challenge. And it is only common sense that you can’t solve a problem if you don’t understand root cause.
With all this background and perspective and in an effort to boil five years of study into a few consumable pieces of information I point you to a the GPPSS Financial Transparency Series. There are five presentations in the Series:
- Proposal A, School Funding, and Taxes
- Employee Direct Compensation
- Employee Indirect Compensation
- Fund Equity
- 2009-10 Budget Summary
The primary goal of the series is to present financial information in a relevant, objective, and user-friendly format – not a simple task while wading through reams of data in all types of formats from dozens of sources. Ultimately I believe we have achieved that primary goal, but you will be the judge.
As we look ahead to the November 3rd ballot, on which two measures will be put to voters that will account for 25% of the district’s funding, I want to introduce this series and encourage you to review them, both as downloaded PDF’s (linked above) and as narrated YouTube style videos posted on the district’s website. I hope you take the time to review them and I welcome your feedback at brendan_p_walsh@yahoo.com .