Interview with Colin Armstrong on the Fundamental Inequities of Public School Funding
Announcer: Welcome to Inside Michigan Education, a weekly show featuring interviews with community leaders, school administrators, school business officials, and individuals who are passionate about the future of Michigan Education. Now, here is your host for Inside Michigan Education, Rob Huisingh.
Rob Huisingh: Welcome to Inside Michigan Education. This week we are joined by Colin Armstrong. Colin is the Superintendent of the Muskegon Public Schools and he joins us today for part three of our series on the fundamental inequities in public school funding. Welcome Colin, it is a pleasure to have you on our show.
Colin Armstrong: Thank you for the invitation Rob. I really appreciate being here.
Rob Huisingh: Colin, please tell our listeners a little bit about yourself and about Muskegon Public Schools.
Colin Armstrong: Alright. Muskegon Public Schools is the typical urban school district and by that I mean we serve essentially the downtown student body. We have about 6000 students in 13 schools; seven elementary, two middle schools, one high school, three special schools. Of our 6000 students, about 84% are eligible for free and reduced lunch, which means by a federal definition, there is a level of poverty within our student body. Eighteen and a half percent of our students are identified in Special Ed, which is very high. The normal probably would run around 10-11%. We serve a fairly diverse student body, about 54% of our students are African-American; about 10-10.5% are Latino; 33-34% are white and then there is a balance of about 4-5% made up of small Asian population or small American-Indian population and a small but larger mixed population.
Rob Huisingh: Just a sort of recap - in our first interview, we talked to Steve Cousins and he talked about the variation in the amount of money that the State of Michigan gives public schools as a base foundation grant per student and the cost for special education and busing can be very different from individual school districts. And then last week, we spoke to Nick Ceglarek who gave us a bit of the history on the Public School funding and a bit of information on Proposal A and the gap that still remains between many School District Funding based on the taxable base of the regions in which the schools are located in. I was hoping Colin that you would take this opportunity to share with us an overview of the Public School Funding issue and then perhaps, frame it in terms of risk versus benefit of affecting change in the way that we fund our public schools in Michigan.
Colin Armstrong: If you take this nation's favorite word 'equality' and you look at equality in terms of education, one would assume that what it means is that all children get the same high level of education, have the same chances for success so that they can go on to have the same kinds of adult lives. From society's point of view, equality produces a future adult population that also values equality that also values fundamental principles. That is inherent in the U.S. constitution. In fact, the same words are in Michigan State Constitution.
But when you look at how it actually plays out, it is clearly inequitable, because both the Federal Government and the State say to every School District; here is what we want you to do and articulate that in various ways. Here is the curriculum we want you to teach, we want x percentage of students to be able to do this, we want this kind of achievement by the year 2010 and so on. The normal corporate model is 'Identify your goals; allocate the resources to get the goals into the realm of possibility'.
In education, we only really just talk about the goals and then the way you implement the goals as you reallocate your own existing resources. There is a bill in front of the House I believe or it could be the Senate right now that fundamentally says 'At the end of grade three, if students can not read in an appropriate level, they can not be promoted to grade four.' That is not necessary about piece of legislation. But there is no money to implement the interventions that you will want A) to prevent that from happening in grade three or for those students, that it is going to happen to, to modify the program so that they are in a transition and acquire the language skills and move on.
And what you then see is this terribly insidious plot and I have used the word plot specifically. This does not just happen and nobody has noticed it. This is happening because those that have the economic and political power to make it happen are working to ensure it stays the way it is. Nick and Steve actually get less money than I do per student. They get about $7,000 per student because of our very high Special Ed. population, we get about $7500 per student. If you go to the most affluent parts of Michigan which fundamentally are the suburbs around Detroit where some of the corporate auto executives live, those districts get anywhere from 10,000-12,300 per student.
They have students who are coming to school ready to learn, they have students who have families that can support them in various financial ways to enhance their learning. They are much more likely to be successful, if nothing else happened, and yet those districts are given the greatest amount of money to ensure achievement. We are given the least amount of money and the expectation of achievement is there and I can only assume that the people that are making those decisions aren't idiots.
Therefore, they know full well what they are doing and what you are actually doing is protecting the status quo, not producing a change because how we produce the change is really quite obvious. It's just nobody seems to want to do it.
Rob Huisingh: So, Colin; based on the understanding that that something needs to be done within the framework of how our public schools are funded, what's the action? What do we have to do?
Colin Armstrong: I think first and foremost, you need a Government that actually has a plan and the Government can't have a plan unless it has got a vision. I don't think our Government has either. Having said that, I don't think you need a lot of extra money either. I think the money is there, it's just not being spent in the right ways and I would use two examples of that. There are 550 School Districts in Michigan. There are, I think about 60-62 intermediate School Districts. There are 220 chartered schools. I will ignore the chartered schools, I mean they are considered public schools in Michigan but I will ignore them for now.
So, you have about 600 administrative structures. If you look at Muskegon County we have about 32,000-34,000 students. I have worked for six School Districts; all of them have been at least that size. There was one Superintendent. In Muskegon County, we have 13 Superintendents. When we meet, there is two million dollars of salary and benefits sitting around the table and every other district I have worked for, one person did that job.
Now, clearly it's not just a matter of eliminating superintendents that is not what I am suggesting, but there are lots of places to save and the example I use, because I haven't found anybody that disagrees with me yet. There is not a parent in the state of Michigan who cares who organizes the bus route to pick up their child. But every school district has their own people doing that. When I was in Robeson County we had 24,000 students, we bused 11,000 students. We were a big operation. That was done with five people, total five people. Muskegon, we have three people to bus our 6,000 students. You give me two more people and I could arrange busing or anybody, I am not saying you should come to Muskegon.
Any group of five can arrange the busing for the entire County and then you free up some money that is going into administrative redundancy to push back into the classroom for the resources you don't have and I am not saying that because I believe that administrative people and support people aren't working. They are all working hard. They are all doing the best job they can, but the system is setup in such a way that we are spending huge amounts of money that don't need to be spent. Now, I suspect that that sense of independence that exists in Michigan, you don't want to try and merge schools districts i.e. schools. But parents don't care who sets the menu at lunch time. Parents don't care who does the printing. Parents don't care about a lot of those things.
They care deeply about their Principal, their school and you can leave those intact and save, I suspect, in the state of Michigan two to three million dollars on administrative redundancy that would not be needed. Push it down to the classroom. In a similar manner, in our side we get $7500, there are many districts that get $10,000, $11,000 and $12,000. Well, the reality you need to reallocate, since there is no new money, you need to reallocate and yes, would not it be awful if the district that was getting $12,000 lost $2000 per kid? Yes it would be awful for them. They would still be getting more money than my kids would get even after allocation.
So, I am not going to feel terribly, badly for them. If we can run a system on 7,500 they can run a system on 10,000 and then you reallocate that money and instead of 7,500 perhaps, I get 8,800. Now, the gap has changed significantly and it's a whole different ballgame. So, I don't believe you have to increase taxes to make this happen, I don't believe you have to find all kinds of new money. You just need the political courage to say we are going to do this because this is the right thing to do and that's where it falls apart.
Rob Huisingh: Now, Colin I understand that you actually took part in a legal action that attempted to correct the public school funding inequity. I am fascinated by this and I was hoping that you would take this opportunity to share your experience with us.
Colin Armstrong: Sure. I have been in education for 36 years but in point of fact, I have only been in Michigan for a year and a half. Prior to that, I was a superintendent in North Carolina and the same situation existed and that was that districts were funded at different levels. Robeson County's School District, that I worked for, plus ten other districts got together and sued the state and our argument was if you read the State constitution two things are clear. Number one- education is a state responsibility and number two- every citizen has the right to be treated equitably in the eyes of the Government.
We went straight to the Supreme Court and argued that if that is the mandate, the State was deficient because districts like Robeson County and Robeson County was very much like Muskegon, very high needs, very diverse ethnically and so on. We were getting the lowest funding and the most affluent areas were getting the largest funding and just by way of context, the district that I worked for with 24,000 students so, we had about a $250 million budget. If you look at the district with the largest or the greatest amount of funding per student which was Orange County in North Carolina and had Robeson County got the same amount of money per student, we would have got additional $93 million a year.
Now, running a business on $250,000 and running a business on $343,000 is a very different business. So, we were successful, it took a long time. The court case went on for years. Finally, the Supreme Court said they're right, six of them, interestingly enough, what the Supreme Court did as said and to make sure you fix it, we are going to appoint a District Court Judge to oversee this thing and so, both six months after the Court decision, we received an additional 6.5 million dollars for the first year. Not a lot of money on 220 but what we were able to do for kids was really quite amazing. North Carolina doesn't pay well.
We were able to provide signing bonuses and long service bonuses and almost instantly we stabilized our teacher cohort because we had a lot transition. People would work for us until they could get a job in a higher paying district.
We were able to target specific schools with low achievement and do things that within just one year enhanced student achievement by 20%. So, I have seen it work and interesting enough, North Carolina is not the only one. There have been in this, this law suit has existed in probably about 32-33 states and in all but I think one State, it has prevailed.
So very clearly, the message is there that States have an obligation to a child and that obligation doesn't vary based on which part of the State you live in, which race it happens to be. In fact, in reality, is it is probably the reverse. A child who is living in a fairly affluent home actually doesn't need the same level of resources to be as successful because they are coming to school and they have been to Florida at Christmas and there are lots of books in the home and parents are probably educated, understand the importance. They have got advantages coming in.
Other children don't have those advantages and then when they get in, they don't even get the program to help compensate. So, I find the whole situation intolerable and frustrating.
Rob Huisingh: You know Michigan is undoubtedly suffering from the loss of a great number of jobs. I have often heard that the state of our economy discussed in terms of a one state recession. Clearly, our financial issues are far from over. How perilous Colin is the situation for public schools in Michigan?
Colin Armstrong: Well, I will give you an example, when I started with Muskegon, one of the things I told the board is it is a real possibility that one of my jobs, a few years out might be to lead you into bankruptcy, because you are spending more than you are getting and you are depleting your reserves at a rate that you can not actually sustain for more than another two or three years. In 2006-2007, we had reserves to operate for eight days.
So, we were eight days from bankruptcy. At the end of 2007, we had made some adjustments, we saved a little bit, we started this year twelve days from bankruptcy. By the end of this year we will have used up a little bit of what we saved last year and we will probably be ten days of cash flow away from bankruptcy.
I think that is pretty significant and we are not alone. I believe the state estimates at about 230, which is nearly half of the districts in the state are on the verge of technical bankruptcy, i.e. You have no money to operate. So, the situation is really very, very serious. We get these little raises each year which never equal the cost of living increases.
So, you go from cutting things that were nice to have, but not critical, to cannibalizing the system to try and stay alive and that probably is where we are headed for next year because we believe we are going to have to cut another $3 million next year. We have eliminated all the things that were nice to have and do and we will start chewing off our fingers to save ourselves. That is when it becomes truly critical and many districts are already there.
Rob Huisingh: Colin, you have been affecting a tremendous amount of change within the Muskegon Public Schools and I was hoping that here you would take this opportunity to highlight maybe one of the most important initiatives that you are currently focused on.
Colin Armstrong: If you look at our district from the outside, it looks like we sit down everyday, have an idea and try and implement it because it does actually from the outside look quite chaotic. It actually is not and so if I can just start there. Myself and the other senior administrators in the Principal's group, we meet on a regular basis, we discuss things and what is flowed out from that, is that our system has to respond to three things.
Number one, our students have more needs than we can possibly meet on our own. Number two, given the change in the world and the nation and the state, we have to start doing some things we have never done before. Number three, ignoring numbers one and two, we have to do what we have always done much better than we have done it.
So, everything we do is driven by those three things. Although, I said from the outside it might look like we are just shooting off in this direction, that direction and that direction. Last year and I think probably it is the one that gives the best example. We decided that we have to move quickly on high school reform and we wanted to restructure high school. So, then we looked at those issues, right?
Our students have more needs than we can possibly meet on our own. How do we then draw in others? So, we have a number of community events going on. In fact, we were meeting yesterday, where three churches in our community want to offer after school support to our most at-risk kids. Perfect, because we really do not have the ability to deal with these kids from 7 p.m. till 9 p.m.
Then, if you look at, we have got to do things we have never done before. Well, many high schools have offered doing Dual Enrollment Courses. You are in your senior year in high school, but you are also registered in a college course. We have done that in the past, but our kids, one of the issues, 84% free and reduced lunch, getting to the community college is a tough deal and buying a $120 textbook is even tougher. So, starting in the second semester last year, the Dual Enrollment courses are actually offered at the high school. Now, our kids do not have to take a bus to get there. Starting this year, we have bought the text books and we will keep them just like we would keep an algebra two text book.
So, we are constantly trying to take away some of these barriers. That is not a bad example how we are trying to do what we have done, but do it better and then do things we have never done before. Our students are facing the world that we did not face, a different skill set, different demands. So, we have started looking at how do we change that? As with many schools in Michigan, we have a student who is now doing online Mandarin Chinese. We are implementing or we have applied for, you need acceptance, but we have applied to run the International Baccalaureate Program at the high school because what it does is it gives people a more outward looking view.
It is a high quality program, universally recognized, it is not that we are trying to prepare our kids to go to university in France or Germany. But we are trying to prepare them to be competitive and so, you know the reality if you get an International Baccalaureate Diploma, you can apply their pretty much any Ivy League program you want and you move right up to the top because they know what that means about you. In addition, it gives you a different view of the world.
Rob Huisingh: Yes it does.
Colin Armstrong: And for me, that is the much more important part, everybody says, "Oh yeah, China, India, we got to compete with them," but I can not find people who can tell me anything about China and I just do not know how you compete with a nation you know nothing about. So, I will pose some relatively simple questions to people, what is the U.S.'s number one trading partner? And nobody gets it right. Well, how do we compete if we do not know and I think that is what the International Baccalaureate Program does.
So, if you look at the high school there are all kinds of little things going on. But they actually flow back to a framework and we hook things on and we have lots of other examples of high school. This year we are looking at significant conversion of the middle school. We are in the process of converting one of our special schools, our alternate high school because we really are quite driven by this external reality for our students and if we do not get them ready, there are not a lot of other things in their personal situations that are going to make that possible.
Rob Huisingh: Well, Colin I want to thank you for taking the time to join us today and thank you for sharing your knowledge firstly and thank you for everything that you are doing in Muskegon Public Schools. Secondly, it is been a pleasure to have you on our show.
Colin Armstrong: Thank you so much.
Rob Huisingh: If you would like to contact Colin, he can be reached by telephone at (231) 720-2004, again that is (231) 720-2004. You can also visit Muskegon Public Schools online at www.muskegon.k12.mi.us. Again, that URL is www.muskegon.k12.mi.us. Until next week, this is Rob Huisingh with Inside Michigan Education.
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