Water From a Stone
Uncontracted for the first time since 1994, AAPS teachers are now “working to rule,” effectively only doing what is specifically articulated in the expired contract.
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What’s In a Name?
Visit U-M’s campus, and you’re bound to notice names on buildings and signs labeling this or that center or institute. U-M also has hundreds of named professorships. But what does it take to get that distinction?
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A Stain in the Glass?
In the windows of the Law School Reading Room, not all the numbers add up.
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Learning in Limbo
For the first time since 1994, Ann Arbor Public Schools (AAPS) teachers are working with expired contracts.
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Syverud Steps Up
Kent Syverud, chancellor and president of Syracuse University, was unanimously elected by the Board of Regents January 12 as the University of Michigan’s sixteenth president.
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Build Up
A dispirited Praveena Ramaswami sits behind her steering wheel offering, yet again, her arguments against the placement of the new Thurston Elementary School. It required the destruction of key ecological features of the beloved Thurston Nature Center (TNC); it’s being built on soft peat; it all happened without adequate notice to, input from, or consideration of the neighborhood.
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New Millage
On November 4, Ann Arbor voters approved the Washtenaw Intermediate School District’s (WISD) proposed millage, levying 1 mill annually for student career-technical education (CTE). The measure passed at just over 54 percent—about 36,000 ballots cast in favor.
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Federal Funding Cuts Hit International Education
On September 10, the U.S. Department of Education abruptly canceled all federal funding for International Education and Foreign Language Studies programs across the country, including the U-M Center for Southeast Asian Studies (CSEAS).
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Don’t Call It a Data Center
In December, U-M announced its plans to partner with the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) to create a $1.25 billion “state-of-the-art” computing and AI research facility. Construction is expected to begin in 2027 and wrap up in 2031. The facility is tentatively sited on nearly 150 acres of land on Textile Rd. in Ypsilanti Twp.
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Learning Lag
Students in grades 3–7 took the Michigan Student Test of Education Progress (M-STEP) last spring and the results were released on the same late-August day they returned to their classrooms. 56 percent of Ann Arbor’s third graders scored proficient or better, and 61 percent of fourth graders.
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Trade Off
On November 4, voters decide whether to raise property taxes by 1 mill for the next decade. The money raised—$25 million the first year—would support CTE programs like this one. Administrators can talk ad nauseam about the power of giving young people a variety of opportunities for instruction in specific career fields, but it’s student testimonials that have been front and center in the campaign to push through the millage. Yet the debate over the ballot question isn’t so much about support for or opposition to CTE as it is whether a new tax ought to pay for it.
Read MoreThe New Dorms
Clearing the blocks south of Madison kicked off Phase 2 of the U-M’s Central Campus Residential Development. It was a signature project of ill-starred former president Santa Ono.
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Kristin Seefeldt
It was an experiment: give 100 citizens on the margins monthly cash payments of $528 for two years. No strings
attached—they would decide for themselves how best to spend the additional income.
Enrollment Threat
The federal government’s demands for cash payments from universities have made headlines around the country. In August, when the Justice Department fined UCLA $1.2 billion for allegedly tolerating antisemitism, California governor Gavin Newsom called it “extortion.”
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Onward, Robots
Since 2008, Liberty St. has been home to what may be Ann Arbor’s ultimate “if you know, you know” secret: Liberty Street Robot Supply & Repair.
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Screens vs. School
Pioneer High at 3:01 p.m. has the feel of a busy commuter airport. Students pour out of classrooms shouldering backpacks, swinging musical instrument cases, laughing and chatting. Many are holding cell phones.
Those phones are a point of contention at all levels of the education system: from individual classrooms to the school district, and all the way up to the Michigan legislature.
The Meaning of the $3,100 Campus Studio
As move-in began this August, Vic Village South’s website advertised, “Leasing Now Open for 2025–26!” Social media ads announced, “We have 1, 2, 3, and 4-Bedroom apartments available!”
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Full Circle Learning
Founder Pat Montgomery established Clonlara School in 1967 to “allow children to be themselves, free to explore their interests and develop into individuals who [feel] free in their own skin,” she told the Observer in 2017. Through what it calls Full Circle Learning (FCL), Clonlara empowers its students to pursue topics that spark their curiosity, and learn what they learn along the way.
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Driver’s Ed for All
Three Pioneer High School moms have joined forces to fund driver’s education classes for thirty-six Pioneer students in the upcoming school year. It’s a pilot project for their new Drive Forward Foundation, which aspires to provide fully funded driver’s education for underserved students throughout Washtenaw County.
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