Dear Friends,

How grateful I am for the families who live outside of our district who have made the decision and commitment to send their children to our schools! Simply said, we couldn’t make it without them. Beyond any additional funding their presence brings to our district’s operations, in many, many cases they have been actively engaged in our PTO’s, band boosters, and numerous other beneficial school activities. They have enriched our classrooms and helped us to be better across the board.

From time to time I have questions asked of me that revolve around the issue of marketing our school district and school of choice families. The three main questions are:

1.) “Do school of choice families help or hurt the overall budget for our school district since we probably need more teachers and supplies to handle the increase in student count?”

2.) “Why do we need to attract families to come to our schools? Doesn’t the State provide enough money for the schools to maintain our programs?”

3.) “Do we have enough space in our schools to house additional students?”

Let’s address the first question. We have a $13,000,000 budget. Of that amount, $1,958,589 comes from our school of choice enrollments. That equals 15% of our budget. Without those 269 students each bringing $7,281 with them, we would have a catastrophic situation on our hands. We would be cutting teachers, class sizes would increase dramatically and programs would need to be cut.

Here is what that would look like:

• If we were to assume that we would have 12.3 less teachers in the district as a result of reducing each grade level by 22 school of choice students and averaging those 12.3 teachers total compensation packages at $65,000, the “savings” would be: $799,500.

• If we then assumed that each of those 12.3 teachers used $10,000 for supplies and additional materials with those 269 students, that would “save” an additional $123,000.

• At this point, if we lost all 269 school of choice students, we could look to reduce our expenses by $799,500 + $123,000 = $922,500. That leaves us $1,036,089 still to reduce in our overall district budget!

• To reduce our budget by over a million dollars, we would have to look at significantly reducing additional staff, along with bussing, athletics and the arts. All of which would make our school district a shell of what we have come to expect and enjoy.

Regarding the second most asked question about the State providing us with sufficient funding—the economy since 9.11.01 has effected our state more than any other in the union. Jobs and families are leaving the state in record numbers. The Department of Education predicts we will lose another 25,000 students from our state prior to the 2008-09 school year. The Big Three automakers are hanging on by their fingernails. Soaring gas prices make vacationing in our beautiful area more difficult, affecting our tourism trade.

How does this effect school funding? Four out of every six cents of sales tax goes towards the School Aid Fund. Without a healthy economy in Michigan, school funding isn’t healthy. What has that meant for us over the past six plus years? Consider this:

• In 2003 we received an Executive Order cut in January from the Governor to the tune of $84,000!
• In 2004 we were hit with another mid-year Executive Order cut this time for $114,000!
• In Fiscal Year 2003-2004 we had our per pupil amount frozen. Not one extra penny from the State to help us deal with increasing wages, benefits, fuel costs, etc.
• In Fiscal Year 2004-05 we had our per pupil funding frozen again! For the second year in a row, on top of two Executive Order cuts, we had to make due with no additional funding from the State.

As you may recall, we laid off no full time staff. We kept all of our programs. We created Sunrise Academy, our alternative high school. We created the We Are E.R.! Pre-school program at both elementary schools. We closed no schools. We lost no bussing.

We had no fund balance of any subsequence to draw from. So how did we make it? Simple: Our net school of choice student count went up, in that same time period, from 100 to 234! How did we accomplish such a feat? We marketed our schools just like any business would to keep their head above water. We owed that to our students. We owed that to our community who rightfully expect excellence from their schools. To simply allow our school district to rise or fall with decisions coming from Lansing that we had no control over was not acceptable! We had to find revenues that we did have control over—and that was to let people in our region and state know that we had a special school system and we wanted them to be a part of it. It has worked.

One aside—our marketing also brought families to our schools that did find affordable housing. Our efforts to attract families have helped the local economy. Realtors benefit, stores benefit, gas stations benefit. We are the largest employer in the area and we keep creating jobs because of our growth. How can that be bad?
Now to the third question: What about finding space to put our students in—can we do it? Space has always been an issue for our school district. We have people who want to live here. And for those that can’t afford to live here, they still want their children to go to school here, a privilege, I might add, that the law allows them to take advantage of.

When I was in high school at Elk Rapids in the late 60’s and early 70’s, because of overcrowding, we went to school at what is now the middle school from 7:00 a.m. until noon. The middle school students attended school from 12:30 p.m. until 5:30 p.m. After two or three millage attempts, the new high school was finally built and normal scheduling began. Since that time, additions have been put on Lakeland and Cherryland Middle School. A very large addition was made at the high school and a brand new elementary school was built in Williamsburg.

We have found space to be able to go to all-day Kindergarten, which doubled the number of Kindergarten classrooms in the district. We have moved from two sections at every grade level at Mill Creek Elementary to three sections at every grade level except two. We have found space for our pre-school programs. We will find space once again for new students and new sections as needed.

Our average class size at Lakeland Elementary is 19. It is the same number at Mill Creek elementary. That is remarkable! Contrary to those who believe class size is not a factor in meeting student’s cognitive and social-emotional needs, smaller class sizes can and do make a significant impact on a child’s learning. We have more and more students coming to school with learning disabilities, autism and emotional impairments. They need to spend as much time in the regular classroom as they can and the parents of those students greatly desire that fact. Common sense tells us that when we can have a teacher focus their time and energies on a smaller number of students, individual needs are met; talents are magnified and learning is optimized. When a person who has never taught a day in a classroom makes a claim that having a large class is no worse off than a class of 19, that person is patently wrong.

I am so grateful that as your Superintendent, I do not have to go to the Board, and you as a community, and try to figure out how to cut $1,958,589 from next year’s budget. I am so thankful for the 269 students who may not live in our district but are Elk Rapids Elks and are every bit a part of our “school family” as those who live in our boundaries. I am so thankful for their great parents who are committed to us, and know that we are committed to them. Without the funding they bring to our schools, we could not continue to lead out in instructional programming and educational excellence in our region. What a blessing they are to all we believe in and are committed to as a school district.

Some in our community may speak out from time to time trying to convince you that our wonderful children who live in another community, that call themselves Elks, are a bane to our schools. Please don’t buy into that segregationist mentality. This is a country and a community of freedom and free choice. We have a Constitution that protects the rights and justice and fairness of our citizenry. When we allow the voice of a few begin to tell us that only some students get to attend our school district and that to let too many in spoils the pot, how much longer will it be when those same voices start to tell us that certain drinking fountains in our schools are only intended for students that live in our district, and those that don’t have their own fountains to drink out of?

I have been in education now 30 years as a teacher, principal and superintendent. I have seen numerous changes in how schools function and how the State funds districts. The changes, for the most part, have been good. As change occurs, though, we can be like Henry Ford and the Model T or Woolworth’s, a once thriving retail store chain that no longer exists, and believe that the good old times will return and believe that, in our case, the State will find a solution to our funding woes and take care of us, or we can stand up and create a new path that others can follow to get out of the morass of negativity and meet the needs of the children we have been charged to care for! We have chosen the latter path and it has made all the difference.

With respect and admiration for this community,

Jon D. Hoover
Superintendent