COME LITTLE CHILDREN TO THE ANN ARBOR SCHOOLS

How much money should we spend trying to convince children and their parents to attend AAPS? Estimated Waste: $500,000 or the equivalent of 6 new teachers.

MARKETING AAPS SCHOOLS

Ann Arbor Public School student growth has been about the same for the past few years. This year, there was a unplanned net gain of 60 kids to the Ann Arbor Public School district with means $600,000 more in funding from the state. Unfortunately, instead of trying to control cost, our BOE spends a lot of effort and money attempting to attract students back from private schools. Not a very good, long-term solution to a financial crisis would you say? Plus, the Charter Schools all had gains and most private schools are at capacity; for example Greenhills and Gabriel Richard both have waiting lists. So, the gain is not from stealing kids from these schools. In case our parents do not understand the message, we have a school spokesperson to say it plainly in English. A nice luxury and possibly $160,000 per year (including benefits).

New, Fancy E-Newsletter:

In addition, we just added a new E-newsletter for AAPS. Most of our schools communicate with our children and families via a free school newsletter run by volunteers. I am sure the schools would be happy to add school district information. Why do we need a district E-newsletter and more importantly, a someone manage and write it. This is a luxury and not a necessity!

Estimated Waste: 1 New Teacher


An Ad campaign, PR Spokesperson and her secretary, webmaster, e-newsletter, etc. could all be laid off and not one child or teacher would even notice. Instead, to save money, the BOE (Board of Education) will attempt to slash teacher jobs or people that directly influence our children's education--are their priorities screwed up??


Marketing 101 for schools: Have a good educational product and your market will stay with you or with come to you via word of mouth!!!


ELIMINATE: School Spokesperson, Secretary, Marketing Campaign, Webmaster, E-newsletter and other PR consulting projects=$500,000 WASTED!!!!!


NET GAIN: 6 New Teachers

Athletic Directors-Two too many!

Please let me know if I am in error that we have three high school athletic directors; one at each high school? University of Michigan has one. Estimated: $200,000 waste= ~3 teachers. Please correct me if I am wrong.

Welcome to AAPS Waste Watcher

Well, the recent 2009 Washtenaw Regional Enhancement Millage election had a lot of controversy. The voters in Washtenaw County finally said, "NO MORE TAXES & IT'S THE ECONOMY STUPID". Ann Arbor meekly voted to favor of another tax increase (we love taxes here) and what is a few more unemployed; we have shelters for those guys. The results of the election did bring forward several critical questions about the AAPS district:

• Where is all that money going and who is running our school district?
  
• Why is one of the richest school districts in the state always crying....poor?
  
• Are our children eating our school tax money for lunch?
  

I, with many other guest commentators, have decided to explore the aforementioned questions and will hopefully be uncovering and discussing the following:

1. Identify apparent waste in our public schools
2. Provide solutions for better spending

Our ultimate goal is to provide a world-class, child-centered education system for our community. If it does not directly impact the classroom, it is WASTE!!!!


The educational systems need to be designed to weather tough economic times. We welcome comments from the community and hope parents, staff, administrators, teachers and taxpayers will participate in this constructive forum.