As I sat at the school board work session, my worst fears were realized in a number of different ways. First, we found out the grim numbers that we are going to have to reduce our budgets by a total of 3.2 million dollars more to balance our budget. That is in addition to the reductions that the district has already made. which include closing Seaton and Maple Grove Elementary schools.
One has to wonder about the wisdom of the decision by the Lapeer Community School board and Administration to take 2.6 Million dollars out of the rainy day fund last June rather than deal with the budget shortfalls we had last year. We knew last year that by not dealing with our budget shortfall, and just pushing the bill to this year, we would be causing a great deal of pain, but our Lapeer School Board and Administration felt is was the smart way to go. It seems that they were of a mindset that things would somehow be better this year by not addressing our bills last year. It didn't work.
Now we find ourselves having to come up with a budget that is balanced. Our Board and Administration have vowed to be fiscally responsible. This is certainly welcome, but a bit late. But "better late than never" as they say. But are we really going to address the errors of our past, or just try to sweep them under the rug.
I say this because of the millions of dollars that have been invested in closing, or already closed elementary buildings. Had we not known what was coming, this would have been sad. What should anger every parent and taxpayer within our district is that we had very clear information as far back as 2006 that our student numbers were declining, and because of a failure to communicate by both our Administration, and Board members, the information about our current numbers was NEVER discussed in its entirety..
Over the last several weeks I have had conversations with some of our Lapeer School Board members and our Superintendent. It is my belief that our previous school boards were never given the complete 5 year student projections that our district has and continues to use to help guide us as to what our building needs will be. After several conversations and emails with various board members, I now have learned that our past Superintendent did not share the entire 20 odd pages of information contained in each of these sets of projections. I have learned through board members that our school board was given only a 1 page summary of what was in these projections. Keep in mind that each set of projections contains 9 sets of possible numbers for student counts. So without knowing exactly what they received, it is hard to say what our board members were told about our future student numbers. Keep in mind, that the most accurate set of projections put us at 6025 kids for this year. We currently have 5997. Pretty accurate numbers wouldn't you say?
As troubling as the fact that our Previous Superintendent did not share all the information needed with our board was the fact that our board members did not ask for any further data. To be clear, I am simply a parent volunteer who cares about the district that my children attend. I have had no trouble getting the full surveys from our district. Our Board members surely would have been given the full set of numbers had they asked, but sadly, they didn't. So what does this mean for our children and the taxpayers of Lapeer Schools?
First, as taxpayers and financial sponsors for the children of Lapeer Schools, we will be paying until 2037 on improvements to 4 elementary schools, (Hadley, Elba, Seaton, and Maple Grove) that will not be educating our children. The total cost to the taxpayer for this totally preventable error will cost between 2.4 and 2.8 million dollars. That is a very steep price to pay for not providing ALL the information to those who we have elected to make the decisions on our children's behalf.
Second, is the credibility of our district. We passed the bond in 2007 because the citizens of Lapeer Schools decided that our children were worthy of doing what we could, and we trusted that the district would do its best to make the soundest investments for our children. That is not what happened and I have no doubt that our children will pay the price for those adults who have mismanaged our education dollars.
But by far, the worst and most troubling thing for me is the lack of accountability by the Board and our Administration. Were it left up to them, I have no doubt that we would have never even known about the waste of the 2 1/2 million dollars. Also, in my first inquiries about Maple Grove, there was discussion about possibly renting or selling the building. M.G. currently had 1 million dollars of Bond money in it! Had we done either of these options with the building, the almost one million dollars in bond money and the additional million plus in sinking fund money spent on Maple Grove since would have been lost. That is a total of $2,000,000 dollars. Thankfully, our Administration now has plans ot use this building and keep it working for the students of L.C.S. Lets hope that they will choose to continue to use this investment for our kids.
If we are to move forward, than we must have a fair and impartial accounting of just how this poor use of bond money happened. If we cannot trust our school officials to tell us the whole and plain truth about where we have failed in the past, then how can we trust them to do what is right for our children now or in the future? Our kids certainly deserve better...
UPDATE:
I received from Lapeer Schools the answer to my FOIA request about what information our board members were given. It turns out that in October of 2006, they were given one sheet of paper with one chart. We have projections from 05,06,10, and 11, which are in total, over 80 pages, and our board was only given 1 page. Do you think we need to rethink this policy of not fully informing our elected board members?? We need to change the policy to insure that our board members ALWAYS have the best information possible to make the best decisions possible.
I will be adding all of the numbers that our district has obtained in the next few days as well as what they gave our board members.
