A2SO Link Up
The local orchestra program broadens young people’s horizons—and has a broader reach than just Ann Arbor.
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Education
Out of Class
Huron has one of Michigan’s highest chronic absenteeism rates: 68.6 percent of its students in the 2024–25 school year—more than two-thirds—missed at least 10 percent, or eighteen days, of class. Ann Arbor Public Schools’ other two traditional high schools aren’t much better: Pioneer’s rate was 63.7 percent, and Skyline’s was 61.6 percent. (Chronic absenteeism rates include excused and unexcused absences, but neither AAPS nor the state collects data on how many of each are occurring.)
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State Budget Slashes Great Start Collaboratives
Washtenaw County will continue to offer services, but others weren’t so lucky.
Read MoreLetter to the Editor: Teacher Contracts
I am writing as a concerned Ann Arbor community member and AAPS parent regarding the ongoing stalemate in contract negotiations with our teachers. The continued inability to reach an agreement that fairly compensates the educators who serve our students is deeply troubling.
Read MoreWater 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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