For the first time in 50 years some Saginaw students will lack in-city school choice under a plan for which Board of Education members indicated support at a March 8 review session. Official action is slated for a meeting at 5:30 p.m. next Wednesday, March 15.
When the new Saginaw United High School opens in September 2024, East Side sixth-graders will be required to attend a new Saginaw Middle School in the vacated Home of the Trojans, rather than crossing the Saginaw River to enroll at Thompson Middle. The rule, if approved next week, will extend to seventh grade in 2025 and eighth grade in 2026, and so it will be “grandfathered” to prevent forcing changes upon pupils already enrolled at Thompson.
The unified high school is the top item in a $100 million school bond issue that voters approved during the 2020 presidential election, adding about 7 mills to district annual property taxes. Most homeowners face increases of at least several hundred dollars per annum, and tenants also are paying via rent increases.
Superintendent Ramont Roberts said the purpose of the change is to ensure sufficient enrollment at two middle schools to feed pupils to the single Saginaw United, now under construction. At present, the reverse is in place, with Thompson Middle sending students to both Arthur Hill and Saginaw High.
Cross-river enrollment in elementary schools will not be affected, other than informing parents of the choice restrictions that will occur at the sixth-grade level.
Statewide cross-district choice was launched under John Engler, the former Republican governor, during the 1990s. This means city families displeased with a change could send their children completely out of the district, the closest public no-tuition options being White Pine Middle in Saginaw Township, Carrollton Middle, Bridgeport Middle, or a charter school that extends through eight grades.
School leaders during the 1970s approved open enrollment as a compromise desegregation plan to avoid federal school busing mandates that caused unrest in Metro Detroit, and most notably in Boston. This immediately became a one-way street in Saginaw, with hundreds of Black families sending their children from the East Side across the river, but only a handful of Whites doing the same from the West Side to the East Side.
East Side schools since then have become even more segregated than buildings in the South that gradually were forced to integrate by the historic 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision at the U.S. Supreme Court that wiped out “separate but equal” standards.
In a note of irony, former board member Willie Thompson — for whom the integrated middle school now is named — was the leader in adopting the mantra of offering equal quality at all Saginaw schools, not allowing those that are segregated to fall behind.
Former Assistant Superintendent Gene Nuckolls used to lament that East Siders who sent their children across the river with perceptions of “better schools” failed to realize that many teachers on the West Side had started on the East Side. He asked, what was supposed to be the difference? Nonetheless, the West Side-is-better outlook has continued, to the point where a segment of open enrollment stands to end.
The plan would not bring back Central Middle School, circa 1982, which is the district’s third-newest structure behind only Thompson Middle and the new Loomis Elementary. Roberts has said in the past that even newer buildings deteriorate rapidly when they are not used.
Meanwhile, a plan to convert another portion of the vacated Saginaw High to a one-stop center for various local agencies remains up in the air.
A preliminary outline called for the school board, the City Council and the County Board of Commissioners to contribute $750,000 apiece in federal pandemic relief funds (ARPA for the city and county, ESSER for the schools) to convert half of Saginaw High into a one-stop center for agencies that now force people to visit an array of locations. The schools separately would use about $2.5 million from the bond issue to convert the other half into the repurposed middle school.
However, the multi-purpose center concept has fallen apart, with neither the City Council nor the County Board taking action. School Board President Charles Coleman says he will ask why when appointees from the three bodies gather for a liaison meeting at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, March 16, at district headquarters, 550 Millard.
The Saginaw High location “is within the county,” Coleman said, reflecting a perception that on the County Board, the seven suburban and rural members have been known to outvote the four city reps, and an agency multi-purpose center “would benefit the entire county.”
A major portion of the county’s $37 federal ARPA allotment was made eligible because of poverty within the city.
Federal regulations for the COVID-19 recovery windfall dollars emphasize a need for local units to cooperate and stretch the value. A proposed mental health “behavioral” center and the tentative Saginaw High plan are the only major cooperative ventures that have emerged from the combined $150 million in aid for the city, the county and the city schools.
Inflation continues to push the school millage cost beyond the $100 million, and Coleman says school leaders will continue to pursue creative ways to fulfill the excesses, instead of asking residents for another, smaller millage.
The latest is switching some teachers’ wages to the ESSER category, leaving more money in the general budget to help cover the costs. One sacrifice is not having enough funds to add air conditioning to elementary buildings that still are lacking, but this was not a millage promise.
The four millage highlights are:
- Construction of Saginaw United at the existing Saginaw Arts and Sciences Academy location.
- Renovation of a portion of Arthur Hill High for SASA to relocate.
- Construction of a new Handley School at the rear portion of the Arthur Hill property, facing Passolt Street.
- Restoring an East Side middle school, through a Saginaw High renovation.
