School Board Voter Guide

Despite the enormous challenges facing Ann Arbor Public Schools—or perhaps because of them—there is no shortage of candidates on the ballot to win five seats.

Technically, there are two elections on November 3. The first finds nine hopefuls vying for four seats, each with four-year terms. First-term trustees Torchio Feaster and Susan Schmidt as well as twenty-three-year veteran Susan Baskett are retiring; only first-termer Rima Mohammad is running for reelection.

Separately, there is a special election to complete the last two years of the four-year term won by Don Wilkerson in 2024. Wilkerson resigned in May amid a charge of domestic violence involving his estranged wife, prompting the board to appoint Steven Norton to serve until a new elected trustee is sworn in. Norton isn’t running, but Wilkerson is. He has two opponents.

The Observer spoke to all of them, and a few common threads stood out. All twelve hit on concerns about what they saw as the current board’s lack of transparency regarding its struggling finances as well as its policymaking processes. They all found comments about school closures by Feaster, Schmidt, and Baskett in the September Observer premature and inappropriate. And they all agreed that teachers and support staff must be paid better and that the state funding model, which provides the same per-pupil amount regardless of where a student lives, ought to be changed to account for higher costs of living in places like Ann Arbor.

Related: AAPS Teachers Vote Underwhelmingly to Ratify Contract (Sept. 2026)

If Mohammad wins reelection, she’ll be the only trustee come January who is not in their first term. Most candidates saw that dramatic turnover as an opportunity for a new direction and fresh ideas. “We need new voices and new leadership on the board but we also need institutional knowledge,” Mohammad says. “The next board will inherit significant work. We need courageous leaders who will fight for our students and educators but ask hard questions, demand transparency and accountability, and have the courage to make hard decisions.”

Interviews were edited for space and clarity.

General Election

Lyndon Dibble
Age: 19
Occupation: U-M sophomore
AAPS ties: 2025 graduate of Pioneer High; brother attends Pioneer
votedibble.com

Why he’s running: I want to redirect the administration’s focus back to our students first and foremost. In recent years, there’s been a loss of vision. I personally experienced a series of administrative mistakes from inside the classroom, those being losing the $25 million, laying off teachers in the middle of the school year, and not having clear, transparent communication to the community. That negatively harmed my education. That really motivated me to run, and I’m running to place our students first, give our teachers 80/20 health care, reduce technology use, and improve communication.

On school closures: I feel bad for the community because you have an administration that makes financial mistakes, it’s their fault, and then the community has to pay for it by having school closures while the district admin gets a new fancy building at the same time. The first buildings that should close would be the Earhart Dr. administration building before we even start talking about closing some of our schools. That’s one of the reasons I’m running—the Earhart building is inaccessible. It’s a horrible building to have purchased in 2022, and I mean it cost $19 million a couple years before we lost $20 million.

Kelley Ellis
Age: 37
Occupation: Pediatric nurse practitioner
AAPS ties: Mom of three, the oldest of whom is a second grader
kelley4kids.org

Why she’s running: I’m a parent in the district and I started paying attention this year to what’s happening. I see there’s a lot of potential and, obviously, some issues. I’ve been getting more involved, watching the board meetings, doing all these things, and I couldn’t put it down. I just kept thinking about it, kept talking about it with people. There’s a lot of open seats right now and so I was like, you know what? I’m gonna try. I feel like my health care skills really translate here in terms of working with people.

On teacher retention: If you keep your teachers, you keep your students. We need a good culture with good morale for our teachers. Teachers don’t ultimately leave because suddenly the pay is not enough, right? They leave when they feel there are existential things making their job just too hard to do. We need to make it easier for teachers to do their jobs. I also wonder if we talk to the city about housing things to attract families. There are other players that could help us attract families and keep students here. By doing that, you raise your revenue.

Becca Hogan
Age: 41
Occupation: Senior digital value manager, Workday
AAPS ties: Mom of three AAPS students; board member of the Ann Arbor PTO Council; attended kindergarten at Mack Elementary
AAEA Endorsed
beccaforboard.com

Why she’s running: Public education is one of the foundational pillars of our democracy. I’m all-in on public education. Having worked as an education advocate from outside the system for a while and knowing that there are five seats open on the board, I decided it was time to run. I’m running because I want principled, transparent spending. Yes, enrollment has definitely led to a decline in our funding, but we are not spending the funds we get appropriately or well, and we are not tracking that. I do not believe this board has kept up with its fiduciary responsibility as a board should, in terms of tracking their spending. The Ann Arbor area has truly lost faith in the Ann Arbor Public Schools because of its issues and problems and the way that they operate.

On falling enrollment: Obviously, we can’t change demographics, but we can turn around the perception and image of AAPS so that people stop taking their kids to private schools or charter schools that are homeschooling them. The trust got broken by not bringing back before- and after-care soon enough after the pandemic shutdown. And then, two years ago when they handled the huge $25 million budget gap, they mismanaged, mismanaged, mismanaged, and treated the public as an afterthought, or even as adversaries.

Rima Mohammad
Age: 45
Occupation: Clinical professor, U-M College of Pharmacy
AAPS ties: Elected to AAPS board in 2022; mom of AAPS students in fifth, eighth, ninth, and twelfth grades
AAEA Endorsed
rimaforaaps.com

Why she’s running again: I believe deeply in the power of public education. Public schools truly changed my life. I came here as a refugee. I was an English language learner, I experienced poverty, racism, and barriers, and I know what it means when teachers see your potential and believe in you. I am running again because my experiences give me a unique perspective. I led the district through some of its most difficult moments and pushed for transparency, accountability, courage, and compassion. I’m running again because the work’s not finished.

Related: “Over the Cliff” (Apr. 2024)

On school closures: There’s a lot of history and emotion attached to these schools. They cannot be just numbers on a spreadsheet. AAPS is facing real financial pressure, but school closure should not be the starting point or a predetermined solution. We cannot do it in four months. We have to center our most vulnerable student communities first because they would be the most impacted and we cannot pit schools against one another. If school closures become necessary, there must be a transparent, data-driven, long-term strategy.

Jennifer Oldham
Age: 47
Occupation: Stay-at-home mom
AAPS ties: Mom of three AAPS students in third, sixth, and ninth grades
oldhamforaaps.com

Why she’s running: We need good people who are willing to dig into the information and are willing to learn, willing to talk to lots of people. I didn’t necessarily think that should be me, but when I asked the other people I know who show up at board meetings on a regular basis, no one else was running. I have the privilege of being a stay-at-home parent and have a lot of time to devote to the things that interest me, so I put my name in the hat.

On closing schools: I disagree that closing schools would free up anywhere near enough money for what the teachers are asking, and there are other costs that increase when you close schools, such as busing. We do have some areas where schools close together and maybe it might make sense but, from what I’ve read, even if closing schools goes well, you’re only saving about 15 percent of the operating budget of a school.

Carolyn Siebers
Age: 72
Occupation: Retired educator
AAPS ties: Taught math in district from 1985–2000; former department chair at Community High; former class principal at Pioneer
votecarolynsiebers.com

Why she’s running: I’ve been thinking about school board for a long time just because I really care about schools, and I really care that the district does well. As an educator, my thing was always removing obstacles for students to learn. And now I’m seeing the district has declined academically and financially and that labor relations are not good. I just feel like there’s a really strong need for someone like me because we really need to get back to focusing on students and their learning.

On improving student achievement: I’ve been tutoring some kids in math and they don’t have a textbook. They have a thing online that’s not really a textbook. It doesn’t have definitions. It’s hard to find things. If you’re an English language learner and you need to go back and reread something or reread what the definition is, it isn’t really conducive to any of that. Some national research is coming out that, especially with complex or long passages, students comprehend and retain information better on paper than screens. Did we really consider if this was good in every subject for the kids?

Aaron Puno
Age: 20
Occupation: U-M senior
AAPS ties: 2023 graduate of Pioneer High
AAEA Endorsed
votepuno.com

Why he’s running: I spent thirteen years as a kid in this district. This district did very well for me, and I’m just sick of seeing it in the state that it’s in. These Ann Arbor teachers did very well for me, but the value of their pay keeps going down and down and down because inflation keeps ravaging. I want to ensure this district will give the kids who come after me just as good, if not better, of an education than what I got.

On falling test scores: The answer to the question of the drop in student achievement is simply that Covid broke everybody. It was just a bleak environment. Achievement is down because things aren’t normal right now. Covid did that to us, and the first step for anything … whether that’s getting general achievement up or closing the achievement gap between minorities and the majority, starts with we have enough good teachers in place who are paid well enough. Then we can talk about specific targets and rebuilding a culture of learning.

Related: Ann Arbor’s Reading Challenge (July 2026)

Brandon Smith
Age: 33
Occupation: Social studies teacher, Saline High
AAPS ties: Dad of a four-year-old starting public school in 2027
AAEA Endorsed
votebrandonforboard.com

Why he’s running: A big part of it for me is improving my daughter’s educational experience. The other side is, I’m a teacher. When we talk about cell-phone policies or AI in the classroom or school funding, it’s personal to me. I’ve been that teacher struggling to pay for my life, I want to help those teachers, too. I’m also an education advocate—I’m vice president of the Saline Education Association—so I’ve negotiated contracts. I’m on the governing board of the Washtenaw County Education Association and I serve on the Governor’s Education Council. This seemed like another way I can potentially help.

On struggling finances: Our funding model forces districts to compete for students, which is disappointing because you never want districts to be at odds. But Ann Arbor has to make sure the programs we offer and their size and scope match the student count. We also have to make sure we are competitive with the types of offerings; when we see students leave our district, we need to know why. If they’re going for more of a STEM-centered education, we need to make sure our offerings match that.

Andy Spencer
Age: 55
Occupation: Biochemist working in health care research
AAPS ties: Dad of one Pioneer High alum and one current freshman
spencer-aaps.com

Why he’s running: My hobby is to think a lot about public schools. I was raised by two public school teachers who went on to be superintendents and principals. My brother is a superintendent. So around the dinner table at my house, this is what we talked about. Ann Arbor needs to be a destination district. I think it can be. It has been in the past. It can be again. I want to spend my time and effort serving the public by helping as much as I can with public schools.

On improving student achievement: As the son of teachers, looking at test scores always comes with a lot of caveats. Teachers really don’t like to so-called “teach to the test.” At the end of the day, we’re required in this state to do certain testing, and we need to make some real progress on getting our kids as proficient as possible on those types of tests, whether it be math, reading, verbal. Are these tests the best way to measure student achievement? In my opinion, no. But they’re there, and we have to work with them.

Special Election

John Benson
Age: 49
Occupation: Senior manager of investment operations, UAW Retiree Medical Benefits Trust
AAPS ties: Dad of a third-grader and kindergartner
AAEA Endorsed
friendsofjohnbenson.com

Why he’s running: I have a finance governance background, and other parents asked my impressions of the district’s financial situation. That drew me into just doing some analysis with publicly available data, and then people had asked me about doing a four-year term, but I have little kids, I can’t do that. When Don Wilkerson resigned and the board needed someone for a seven-month term, I thought I could do that and maybe run for the two-year term. I didn’t get that appointment but decided to run anyway.

On the district’s finances: So here are the numbers that I think are almost most important in order. Revenue is up 25 percent in the last six years. Our fund balance is down 27 percent in the last six years. That shouldn’t be the case, and I think that needs to be explained. Remember, there’s multiple things that go into the kitty. The student count doesn’t create the only pool of money that is collected. In an inflationary environment where people have jobs, you’re going to be collecting from each person through sales and income taxes. When we frame these things about the budget, we’ve got to remember revenue’s up. And at the August 12 meeting, the superintendent said enrollment this fall was ahead 2.6 percent. So that’s not a data point for [school closures] yet.

Kevin Hudson
Age: 57
Occupation: Retired educator
AAPS ties: 1987 Huron High alum; daughter is an AAPS teacher; grandfather of an AAPS kindergartner and first-grader; former Pioneer High class principal

Why he’s running: The main reason is because I was at the micro-level for over thirty years and now it’s an opportunity for me to be more at the macro level where I’m able to support the students of Ann Arbor Public Schools. AAPS should be the preeminent district in the state but there’s some things they need to work on. Transparency is one, safety is the other, and equity as well. I intentionally picked the two-year seat because I am not going to be a career politician. I’ve interacted with hundreds of thousands of students from the time that I started, and people appreciate my transparency. I’m going to say exactly what I’m thinking.

On in-district Schools of Choice: My concern is what you are doing to those local neighborhoods. As with in-district transfers right now, that destroys communities. My kid went to their neighborhood school which was Carpenter, but a kid who lives in the same cul-de-sac as me went to Wines and a kid right down the street went to Eberwhite. How are these kids supposed to know each other and build community if they are all going to separate schools?

Don Wilkerson
Age: 40
Occupation: Independent financial consultant
AAPS ties: Served as a board trustee from 2025–26; dad to two AAPS graduates and two current Young 5s students
votedonwilkerson.com

Why he’s running again: I want to continue the work that I’ve been invested in doing to change the trajectory of the district. We are still facing critical financial issues as we move forward. I’m looking to partner with the district and the community to get the district on sound financial standing while also trying to improve transparency and communication. There’s a lot of challenging things coming up, so it’s really about getting back to work.

On closing schools: What’s most important is engaging the community in the discussion. Nobody wants any of the schools to close. But there are operational challenges, right? There’s a couple schools that are underutilized right now, but I advocate for looking at programming that can change the utilization of those schools. I’ll give you a great example: Northside Elementary. Families were continuing to leave, go to other elementaries. We were at like 250 students for a school that could easily hold 500. Our community advocated for something to change and from those discussions came A2STEAM. It’s been a tremendously successful program. … Rather than just thinking about it as a closing issue, there are opportunities for us to look at programming distinctions to drive enrollment. 

Related: A Special Election Turns Weird (July 2026)

The state and local general election is Tuesday, November 3. Polling places are open from 7 a.m. until 8 p.m. on Election Day. 

 

This article has been edited since it appeared in the October 2026 Observer. The date of the election was corrected.