Why an informed School Board matters

Starting in 2005, Lapeer Community Schools started getting appraisals on buildings that it might be looking to take off-line and sell down the road. This started under Superintendent Tom Gay, and it continued under Debbie Thompson. This was a very reasonable thing to do since they were aware that our numbers were trending down. Unfortunately, our school board members were not given the same information that the Administration had.

As our district closed Attica and Irwin, I did a FOIA request to obtain copies of all the buildings that appraisals had been done for. What you won't hear from the administration or the newspapers are that while we are selling Elba Elementary for $150,000, just a few short years ago in 2005, the Burgoyne Appraisal Company out of Ann Arbor, a 3rd party Appraisal firm, Appraised Elba's value at $800,000 (View Report HERE). That does not include the additional $110,000 dollars "invested" from the 2007 bond.

Hadley Elementary will be selling for less. That building will go for $100,000. According to a separate report by the same firm obtained for Hadley Elementary, that building was valued at $500,000.(View Report HERE) Again, that was in the fall of 2005. We only put $69,837 dollars of bond money into that particular building.

But what should outrage every parent and taxpayer in the Lapeer Schools district is that our Administration knew what the buildings were worth, knew that our enrollment was trending down at an alarming rate, and they NEVER shared this information with those we elected to oversee the district.

The LCS Superintendent and board of education have been made aware of this problem. I am hoping that policy can be put in place to insure that our elected board members are informed of all future information, and given access to full reports relating to student counts and enrollment. I am waiting on a response to see if such changes are being worked out. Otherwise, there is nothing to say that a future board of education might not be given access to information that they need to make the best choices possible for our kids, again.

My point in all of this is not to demonize the administration, but to point out a major flaw that MUST be addressed. I have been speaking out on this for the better part of 6 months, and so far there have been no changes. It is time for people to start asking our school administration and board members why they are not addressing this issue. If we look at the budgets over the last 5 years, is it not reasonable to think that if the good people from our board had known where our enrollment trends were headed they might have demanded more of the hard choices earlier on? Might they have made choices that could have saved our district money, or at the least not spent money on buildings that would be closing?

   It seems to me that the answer to that question should be yes. I would urge people to ask our School Board members and Administration to address this issue. We must insure that this type of "lapse" in communications between our board and Superintendent never occur again.