HOW DID WE GET HERE? A lot of people have asked me how we got to the point of considering annexation. As many of you know the community voted to built the New WL High School prior to what ended up being a huge economic down turn. During that period of time a group of Anti-Growth people waged a campaign to stop the expansion of residential growth in our community. That war on growth carried into a lawsuit that scared away any developer who was considering Whitmore Lake. That lawsuit was finally finished last year but the developer has not pursued moving forward with any residential development. This was detrimental because in Whitmore Lake you have starter homes, followed by the next step up for small families but then there is a huge housing gap in our community. Therefor as families start to grow there is nowhere for them to move to in the Whitmore Lake School District. The supply of desired homes of that size is very limited. That is where we started to see a loss of kids. Secondly we were/are graduating 70-90 kids a year and only bringing in 50-60 new kindergartners (extremely low birth rates across the state). That was a huge drain on the budget as that could be a loss of up to $288,000 every year. Third with the housing crash, it made it impossible for parents who had graduates that went off to college to sell their homes because the value dropped so severely. This gave new families fewer homes to choose from if any in our school district. We did have a large number of families that were forced to move due to jobs. Many left the state and left homes unoccupied in foreclosure limbo for years. Forth we had a huge number of Manufactured Homes get repossessed or abandoned in Northfield Estates. Those lots continue to be empty. If you havent, talk a drive through the park and see for yourself. We are talking 100s of kids that disappeared from the district. Costing the district well over $1,000,000 a year. Fifth the state year after year had cut the amount of money per pupil that school districts received up until 2012-13 when a very small amount of money was given back to the schools. We are still receiving over $400 less per pupil than we were receiving in 2008-09 school year. Thats another $400,000 a year we are no longer receiving. What makes it difficult for people to understand is if I have a class that goes from 28 kids to 21 kids and we lose 7 kids that doesnt allow for a cut in resources by any dollar amount because there still has to be a teacher in that classroom but we as a district lose over $50,000. The Board of Education has worked very hard to avoid these pains from hitting the classroom for years and that is where the board prior to my arrival in January 2013 has spent the fund balance that existed. Today cuts are directly hitting the classrooms because there is no money left in the bank. This is the reason we are down to being a two building district. This is why we have had to layoff teachers once the school year has begun. This is why we brought forth the possibility of Annexation. I believe in securing Whitmore Lakes future. The way to do that is supporting annexation. It will make for a more financially secured school district. It will enhance programs at the elementary level and give our High Schools greater academic opportunities. I will be voting YES!
Posted on: Sat, 27 Sep 2014 14:04:32 +0000
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