I'm the Ann Arbor school board president. Despite $25M deficit, we're still in top 10% | Letters

Ann Arbor Public Schools has earned a national reputation for providing a high-quality education to our students. We have a proven track record of success and a culture of excellence. The high bar we have set for learning and results does not change because of efforts to scale back spending.

Right now, much attention has understandably been focused on the $25 million budget shortfall facing Ann Arbor Public Schools. Rest assured, my colleagues on the Board of Education and I remain committed to thoughtfully balancing our budget while doing everything we can to ensure our students continue receiving an excellent education.

I have two children who attend the Ann Arbor Public Schools, and I was honored to be appointed to the board in October and to be elected president of the Ann Arbor Public Schools Board of Education in January.  While I did not create the current budget situation, I am dedicated to addressing it along with our newly hired superintendent, Jazz Parks. Our board is focused on addressing this shortfall in a way that minimizes the impact on our students and classrooms. We are also using this difficult moment to streamline, refocus and reprioritize our school operations to make us better positioned for future growth and success.

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We know our schools and students are continuing to perform at a high level. In April, U.S. News & World Report ranked four of our high schools — Skyline, Pioneer, Community and Huron — among the top 50 high schools in Michigan, and among the top 10% of high schools across the country.

Our students continue to excel in the classroom while our district leaders continue the difficult task of addressing our budget shortfall. We have retained an independent, third-party auditor to review our district's finances so our decisions proceed from a foundation of facts and real numbers, not speculation. Their work, along with feedback from our community, will help us set up stronger protocols, better monitoring and a clearer process to create accountability for the future and to ensure this situation does not ever happen again.

In recent weeks, our district submitted a corrective action plan to the state, which lays out the district’s broad vision to achieve a minimum fund balance of 5% immediately as we are required to do by state law, while we work to increase our fund balance to 6% to 15% per our board policy.

Members of the school board and our district’s leadership team have spent the past several weeks seeking feedback from taxpayers, families, students and staff about our financial challenges. Over 4,000 community members completed our survey on this issue, and more than 3,000 community members participated in a recent virtual town hall.

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We are considering this input as we proceed with our comprehensive district plan, which will undoubtably require staff reductions. This is both unfortunate and unavoidable. We are making every effort to ensure these reductions are done in a way that minimizes the impact on classrooms and student learning.

At the same time, we are looking forward to telling the great stories of achievement and excellence happening every day in our district. We know that working together with our community and putting a spotlight on incredible success stories of our educators, students and alumni we will attract new students and make families already enrolled in AAPS excited to continue their students’ educational journey with us.

Those factors, along with a stronger commitment to be better stewards of taxpayer dollars, will mean a stronger Ann Arbor Public Schools for years to come. I look forward to continuing our work together that will have our district well positioned for a healthy and prosperous future.

Torchio Feaster

The writer is the president of the Ann Arbor Public Schools Board of Education

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Ann Arbor schools $25M deficit fixable | Letters to the Editor