16980 Kercheval Pl • McCourt Building • Grosse Pointe, MI 48230 • 313.882.6900 • Office Hours: Monday-Friday 9am-5pm
Friday, November 4, 2022
GPN Staff
Grosse Pointers have important votes to cast on Nov. 8 for Michigan’s governor, secretary of state, attorney general, state Supreme Court, Congress, Senate, circuit courts, state and university boards, as well as three very important proposals.
Locally, we face a significant decision to fill three open seats on the Grosse Pointe Public School System Board of Education. After a months-long, heated race, it is more apparent than ever that our district cannot afford to elect less than stellar trustees to serve our students, teachers and community for the next four years.
The option is not there for us to select more “yes” people who think everything is just fine when there are district fires sounding the alarms. The time is now to elect the candidates who will lead our district back to unparalleled excellence.
Our editorial staff has rightfully recused itself as a collective from following the traditional endorsement path of naming specific board candidates for which to vote, due to our conflict of interest with newspaper ownership. Bloomberg newspapers covered the 2020 presidential race with their owner as one of the election’s most serious contenders. We know we can do it too.
That does not, however, lessen our responsibility to provide insights to the voting public that we have gained by interviewing each of the 10 candidates in person and following and reporting on their campaigns throughout these months.
There are stark personality differences among the 10 choices, to be sure. But charming or funny just isn’t enough. Loud and look-at-me will wear thin. Low-key and understated should not be discounted, and often signifies measured leadership.
With the district still shaking off the effects of being one of the last ones in the state to return to in-person learning, specific, back-to-basics areas have taken on renewed importance. We view the following issues to be the most immediate and important for new school board members to address, fix and improve, along with the attributes required to accomplish them from among the 10 candidates:
Academic excellence and achievement
Yes, there is an important difference between academic excellence and “educational” excellence, the latter of which is the verbiage in the district’s current strategic plan. While we appreciate what both stand for, our district must go where Rome is burning. And re-focusing on strengthening our students’ math, reading and writing skills should rise above all else before we shift focus. If we zero in on tangential emotional and social aspects while we still have kids failing and falling behind, we aren’t doing our essential job as a school system. That should not be a debate. Ideally our learning environments should have a holistic approach, but COVID has forced our hand to push the reset button and get back to ensuring that academic skills and learning benchmarks are being met first and foremost. And lest we forget how quickly things changed for our students during COVID, we encourage you to consider what candidates would fight their hardest on behalf of students, should we face shutdowns again. Ask yourself what candidates would insist on creative solutions for learning and who are imaginative enough to generate new ideas should a similar shutdown happen, versus those who would simply fall in line and blindly follow marching orders? Our district has identified an increased percentage of our student body as “at-risk” learners, who most especially cannot afford more learning loss. Elect trustees who are proponents of an academics-first focus, which will go a long way to right our students’ paths of success and reestablish our district as a leader in Michigan.
Enrollment decline
Vote for the candidates whose ideas are quantifiable and achievable in stopping our enrollment decline. Interviewing families who left and inviting them to come back should be ground zero. Recruiting the youngest families by establishing an early childhood education center should be a priority. Once again, resetting ourselves with a simple, basic approach applies here. In contrast, the idea of somehow creating “affordable” family housing into the Pointes (the whys and hows of which are a completely different conversation) is a knee-jerk response to our declining enrollment. Quite frankly, it also falls out of the BOE’s scope. We caution voters to pause and evaluate a candidate with a “butts in seats” approach. Hearing a few candidates recommend this in our interviews underscored two things: Their lack of understanding or appreciation of the value of our community’s long-established aspirational nature, and/or what little impact they would have on the board with misguided, ineffective or unsustainable ideas such as these.
Financial security, stewardship and stability
In our interviews, there are clear differences between candidates who possess sophisticated financial and business savvy, and those that simply do not. At a time when every single penny counts in our district, we need the three newest trustees to elevate the board’s skillset in this arena. We also need to elect board members who have experience in creating the most effective organizational structures to evaluate issues and ideas and to increase the board’s productivity. Elect trustees who understand how boards efficiently and effectively operate and who can implement process improvements, based on leadership experience. Not all candidates are created equally here.
Enhancing our trades program as a leader in Michigan
The time is ripe for our district to develop a full-blown trades program that is the envy of the state. We have the seeds in the dirt, but we need to elect trustees who are willing to help fertilize a healthy trades program that bears substantial fruit. Not only could it serve as a powerful recruitment tool, but could also provide a legitimate, directed career option for the many students who desire this path. Look for candidates who are motivated and inspired about a trades program, and who are connected to businesses, learning and philanthropic institutions, who could capitalize on these relationships to benefit our students and district.
At times, this election season has been exasperating with controversies, sign wars and social media showdowns. But our schools’ future depends on electing the three candidates who will be the most effective and successful in getting things done for our district’s stakeholders as a board of education trustee.
We urge you to vote. Whether it’s at the polls or voting by absentee ballot there are no excuses for not participating in this democratic process. Not exercising this right is the ultimate way to fail yourself and each other. Choose wisely.
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