A Vital School Board Vote

“This is the most important school board election in the last twenty years,” says Don Wilkerson, one of the six candidates running for three open seats on the seven-seat Ann Arbor school board. (Torchio Feaster is unopposed for the remainder of the term he was appointed to last year.)

Wilkerson isn’t exaggerating. The November 5 election is about the schools’ past, present, and future—the current board’s firing of superintendent Jeanice Swift last summer, the discovery of a $25 million hole the budget in March, the hiring of Jazz Parks as the new superintendent in June, and the need to grow enrollment to keep the schools financially sound in the future.

Of the seven candidates, two are current board members: Feaster and one-term trustee Ernesto Querijero. Three ran unsuccessfully in past elections: Wilkerson, Eric Sturgis, and Leslie Wilkins. And two—Megan Kanous and Glynda Wilks—are running for the first time. 

None of the candidates think much of the current board’s work, including the two current members.

“We need to do much, much, much better,” says Feaster, forty-two and an assistant 22nd District Circuit Court public defender who was appointed in October and made president in January. “When you have a $25 million deficit, you can’t give them an A or a B or maybe not even a C.” 

“The perception of the community is that there isn’t … enough information sharing going on for the board to make some good decisions,” says Querijero, fifty and a Washtenaw Community College English professor. “And I think that’s true.” Like Feaster, he’d give the board “maybe a C.” 

“I would give them a C,” agrees Wilkins, fifty-three and an MBA whose previous run was in 2022. “They’ve been met with a lot of challenges and have addressed those challenges. [But] there’s also been challenges that they haven’t addressed.” 

“Everyone on the board currently has their heart in the right place,” says Sturgis, thirty-eight and a Skyline High School tennis coach whose previous run was in 2005. “But I think some of them have a personal issue with others that inhibits the work of collaboration.” He’d give them a D because of the “$25 million deficit and infighting at board meetings.”

“The board’s missed the mark,” says Wilkerson, thirty-eight and director of IT risk advisory services for Rehmann, who ran previously in 2014 and 2016. “They don’t have a good working relationship.” He’d grade the board with a “D or an F at this point.”

“I don’t think that they’ve been as successful as they could be,” says Kanous, forty-five and business development manager at Publisher Services Inc. “The dynamic can definitely be improved.” While she wouldn’t give the board a letter grade, she emails that it deserves a “Needs Improvement” all in bold.

“I believe that some, not all, but some, current board members have been focused on their own pet projects,” says Wilks, fifty-eight, a freelance editor and former AAPS teacher. Some also were “focused on trying to fire the former superintendent.” She adds by email that the firing and other “divisive issues distracted the board members from … the work necessary to realign the budget to address the financial cliff created by one-time funds given by the state and federal governments during COVID.”

Wilks, too, declines to give the board a letter grade but says there is “definitely a big room for improvement and new leadership in some of those seats.”

Feaster calls the board’s ouster of ten-year-veteran Jeanice Swift “a big mistake.” But Querijero says he “felt strong enough about it to not only enter the first motion [to remove her] but also the second motion to be able to get to a separation agreement faster.” 

Wilkins says “it was terrible timing” and expensive because the board “did it without cause.” But she also says “they were right to do what they did. It was time for a change.”

The other candidates disagree. “There was a [review] process in place and that wasn’t followed,” says Sturgis. “And I think it hurt the school district overall. … They lost focus of the financials [which] put us in this big deficit.”

“It seemed very out of place and extremely rushed and maybe pushed through due to special interests,” says Wilkerson. Kanous agrees that the “it was rushed” and Wilks says that “the timing couldn’t have been worse. There were so many other priorities beyond focusing on trying to get rid of our superintendent.”

Related: Ten and Done
Swift Decision

Five months after Swift left, the board learned of a $25 million hole in the budget that threatened to put the district under the state’s financial control. After reading the Plante Moran report on the origin of the crisis, no one can “think that the board did a good job,” Feaster says. But he says he is confident in the administration’s plan to balance the books. 

“We all know [the budget] was poorly handled,” says Wilkins. “I think just not enough attention was paid to it.” To ensure the current budget works, “I will ask questions,” she says. “These meetings are already so long, but I’m gonna be the one making ’em longer!”

Sturgis characterizes the board’s handling of the budget prior to March as “dereliction of duty. It’s their job. They needed to be following the budget. … I would want to look at the budget every month … and make sure we’re on track.”

“Clearly the board wasn’t focused on the budget,” agrees Wilkerson. “They were pretty hands-off, just letting things play out.” He adds that the budget cuts the board approved in June “felt very rushed. It didn’t sound like the community’s perspective was considered enough.”

Querijero thinks the board “took a hasty approach out of fear of what could happen. … Maybe fear-mongering is a little bit strong, but maybe projecting a false sense of urgency.” Given more time, he says, he might have spared world languages at the elementary level and “probably would’ve explored selling buildings and some assets.” 

Kanous calls the budget cuts “extremely disruptive,” and says that if elected, she “would immediately start looking at the strategic plan and working with the community and our teachers and our administration … so that we know where we really want to be focusing our efforts on spending our resources.” 

Wilks says she, too, would “really want to examine what the plan is.” Wilkerson sounds a positive note, suggesting that “strategic planning can really bring the community together. 

Related: Over the Cliff
What’s Next for AAPS?

All the candidates say they support Parks, though to different degrees.

“She was the right person at the right time to steward us through the difficult financial crisis,” says Feaster. “She has a good team, but the board has to do its part. Her budget depends on enrollment, and public trust is tied to enrollment. And so our board needs to be an example of public trust and professionalism.” 

Querijero says he gives Parks “a lot of grace [because] she doesn’t have a full team. So I know she’s probably doing double duty on a lot of things. On top of that, this is her first time as the big-time Number One, so there’s gonna be a learning curve.”

“I think she’s done a really good job,” says Sturgis. “I think she will succeed, and I think the board can work with her to succeed.” 

“I think she’s stepped in and done the work,” says Wilks. “The budget she came up with, I think it had a lot of thought.” 

“Jazz has done an excellent job,” says Wilkerson. “She’s been a strong leader and a strong voice.” He too stresses that “with the right board, Jazz can succeed.” 

“So far I think that she has tried to be very communicative,” Kanous says. “She’s tried to be a fair voice in the public board meetings.” She believes Parks can succeed with the board’s support, but adds that “she [also] needs the administrative support and she needs the community support.”

“She’s holding her own,” says Wilks. And like the other candidates, she stresses that “it’s important to have the right leadership in those board seats in order to really support our superintendent and to really help her grow and thrive.”

Ultimately, the budget depends on enrollment: State aid is based on the district’s fall headcount. Ann Arbor’s peaked at 17,961 in 2018–19, fell during the pandemic closures, and hasn’t recovered—last year’s count found 16,927 students. 

Feaster thinks that “there are enough students within our district to grow our district,” and that students will return now that the schools are “reopening aftercare [and] some before care.” But according to Querijero, “there is no reliable data” on the number of students in the district who don’t attend AAPS.

There is, however, some data on where departing students went. Citing information from the administration, Kanous writes that “out of the approx 1000 students that left AAPS last year: 2% chose Home Schooling, 15% chose Private, 12% chose to go to a public school within the county and 10% chose a Charter. 11% is Unknown. … The other 50% left the district entirely, whether it was out of county, state, or the U.S.” 

“What attracts families to districts is when districts can show that the first and foremost thing in their mind is students,” Querijero says. He supports the current “limited school of choice” program, which accepts students from other districts at schools that have vacant seats.

That program is “a good idea,” says Sturgis, but “to increase enrollment the board has to work with the superintendent and be supportive so that the community sees that it’s a cohesive board. And then I think we need to make sure that the finances are in line.”

Wilkins wants to see “more of a focus on all of our special education kids. Those needs are not being met, and we’re losing those families. Our Black and Brown families, their needs are not being met, and we’re losing those families.” 

She says the schools need to “earn those families back and get the enrollment back up. … I recently learned that one out of every eight AAPS students qualifies for special services. That’s a lot of families.”

“We should do both,” says Wilkerson of attracting kids from within and outside the district. “There’s a lot of students within our own borders that have left for various reasons. And I think we need to reengage those families.” 

“The way to increase enrollment is to have our schools run smoothly,” Kanous says. “The way to attract students is to not let them leave!” She calls schools of choice “a great way of balancing” enrollment, but like Feaster, she thinks “there are enough kids within the district that if we could hang on to them” enrollment would recover.

“We need to focus on both students within this district who are not in Ann Arbor Public Schools, who are in private schools,” says Wilks. “And we need to look at [bringing in] students through schools of choice.”

But schools of choice cut both ways—other school districts are more than happy to welcome AAPS kids. Asked where they think the students who left during the pandemic are now, candidates suggest homeschooling, private schools like Emerson and Greenhills, and the Saline and Dexter districts. 

In a crowded field, endorsements may play an important role. The Ann Arbor Education Association is the schools’ largest employee group, and it endorses in every election. This year, union president Fred Klein emails, “After conducting our MEA Screening and Recommending process involving a candidate questionnaire and interviews with our 10-member panel, we recommend Torchio Feaster, Ernesto Querijero, Megan Kanous, and Leslie Wilkins.” 

“We are endorsing Megan Kanous, Don Wilkerson and Glynda Wilks,” says former board treasurer Glenn Nelson of Better Boards, Better Schools, a newly revived group made up of former trustees and community members. “And we will be supporting Torchio Feaster.”

Nelson says they looked for candidates who “have a broad perspective on the issue. None of them are what I would call a narrow special-interest candidate.” 

In a follow-up email, Nelson explains the “broad perspective” BBBS is looking for: “caring about all students,” not just a specific subgroup; “paying attention to the multiple components required to provide services to students rather than to just one or two;” and last but not least, having “demonstrated the ability and inclination to work well with others.”

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This article has been edited since it was published in the October 2024 Ann Arbor Observer. Glenn Nelson’s past role on school board has been corrected, and Glynda Wilks’ experience as an AAPS teacher has been added.