I am writing in response to several letters and articles in the Ann Arbor News,
the most recent on December 2, 1997, the day before the School Board's retreat,
on the issue of the demographic study currently underway.  Many of the writers
have said that all of the issues are decided and that the Board is obviously out
of touch with the community.  Both assertions are false.  The decisions have not
been made, and the evidence used to determine that the Board is out of touch has
been misunderstood.

To properly understand the progress made so far, we must first look at the
projected timeline.  Next we need to look at the work the Board has done on
assessing its values.  Then we should look at the survey, to see how it grew out
of the Board's values.  After that, we should look at how the Board used the
information obtained in the survey to determine the instructions to be given to
the consultant, Ecotran, who will create the proposals to be evaluated over the
next several months.  We should also examine the process of opening a new
building.

The current effort began in May, when the Board decided that, instead of opening
Lakewood this Fall, a thorough and complete demographic study should be 
completed this school year.  On June 4, during a regularly scheduled meeting, 
the Board took a first look at the available information and began the process 
of establishing some values to use as guidelines for conducting the study and 
for evaluating the results of the analysis of population figures.  During this
meeting, they were also given a projected timeline for the completion of the
various parts of the study.  Although the timeline has been modified as the 
study has progressed, it is still useful to look at it:

	May through August:  		Information Gathering
		June Board Meeting:		Clarification of values
		June and July:			Hiring of staff
		August:				Formulation of scenarios 
						   and simulations
	September and October:		Community input
	October through December:	Development of recommendations
	January:			Report to the Board

As work progressed, the Administration and Board realised that they needed the
services of a consultant to process the population information and projections
being obtained from City and Township offices. They also realised that they 
would need to provide the community's priorities, as well as the Board's values,
to the consultant in order to get useful suggestions.  So the first step was to
establish the values the Board would use as guidelines.

On June 4, the process of establishing the values began.  The Board was given
background information on the current situation and the legal requirements of
distributing student population among buildings.  They were also given the first
opportunity to review some possible values.  The original list included safety
busing (providing transportation to students who are close enough to walk but
whose path would cross a hazardous area, such as a major thoroughfare),
neighborhood schools, efficient building utilization, fifth graders from a
specific building attending the same middle school, encouraging and supporting a
sense of community and neighborhood, providing diversity in racial and
socio-economic status to enhance the educational experience, insuring continuity
of schools, establishing schools with a minimum population (the exact number of
students was to be determined), setting school starting times to facilitate
student learning, providing schools with open enrollment and choice, using
cross-age transportation, and increasing the minimum distance from the school 
for busing. Two weeks later, on June 18, the Board revisited the list of 
possible values and began developing concensus on the guidelines for the 
demographic study.

The first step was to clarify the list given above.  In this process,
"neighborhood schools" was split into three separate items: 'neighborhood'
schools, not busing a student past a school, and not having a student on a bus
for more than 30 minutes per trip.  "Insuring continuty of schools" was split
into two items: Accommodating the desires of groups and neighborhoods to 
complete a particular level at the same school, and "Grandfathering," 
guaranteeing that families will attend the assigned school for three to five 
years.  Eliminating unnecessary services or practices that are not cost=
effective, to achieve efficiency and cost-savings in transportation was added 
to the list.  During the discussion, the Board learned that our "walk zones" are
already at the State's maximum, one and a half miles from the school, so 
increasing the walk zone was removed from the list.  The individual trustees 
then assigned each value the weight they felt it deserved.  Finally, the 
individual ratings were collated and reviewed, to determine the weight assigned 
by the Board as a whole.

The administration then spent the rest of the summer talking to various 
community members, University of Michigan staff members, and others with 
experience in demographic studies and school redistricting.  These conversations
led them to the conclusion that they would need the assistance of sophisticated 
technology and a company experienced in using it.  On September 10, at another 
regularly scheduled Board meeting, they presented their recommendation of a 
consultant: Ecotran, a company which supplied the software the school district's
transportation department currently uses to organize school bus routes.  They
also reported the results of the value-setting exercise done on June 18.  Of the
fifteen items, fourteen had received a rating of 2.00 or higher (on a scale of
one to four).  Finally, the administration provided a draft of the proposed
survey instrument.  The final version of the survey incorporated suggestions and
comments made during that meeting.  In the final version, the Board's fourteen
highest values were re-worded into twelve survey items.  In addition to the
Board's values, the survey included a question about how to respond to
overcrowding in the high schools.

From this chronology, it should be obvious that the Board's values were
established based on their experience and judgement, the qualities we elected
them for.  The survey was intended to check their perceptions and expectations.
The information the survey obtained was based on the work they had already done:
no issue that they did not consider important was included in the survey
questions. It is also important to remember that their values were intended to 
be used as guidelines, not as priorities.

In November and December, the results of the survey, as well as the Board's
values and other background information, were shared with the community in a
series of meetings at schools throughout the District.  At their retreat on
December 3, the Board considered all of the information gathered by the survey
and in the meetings to prepare the request for proposed solutions from Ecotran. 
The current expectation is that Ecotran will return the results of its analysis
in time for the Board's meeting on December 17.  The Board will then present the
proposals to the community for further review before a final decision is made in
March.

Many people have suggested that new school buildings should be constructed where
they are needed.  Unfortunately, it is extremely unlikely that any new building
would be open in the period this projection of student population is expected to
remain valid, three to five years.  Before a building can be built, the District
must first obtain the funds to build it.  The only reasonable source of those
funds is a bond issue, which must be approved by the citizens of the community,
in an election.  To get the best available interest rate on bonds, the State's
approval is required before the District can ask the voters.  To gain that
approval, the school district must show that it is currently using all of its
available space and meet other review requirements.  While it is possible that
the State's review could be completed quickly, it would be very hard to meet all
the requirements in time to include the bond in the next regularly scheduled
school election, in June of 1998. Since the district probably cannot afford a
special election, the bond issue could not be considered and approved by the
voters before the summer of 1999. Nonetheless, let us assume that we do, in 
fact, approve the bond this next summer.  The school district must then 
formulate enough of a plan to solict bids from architects to design the 
building.  Once the architect is selected, a process that will take at least 
two and probably three months, the building will have to be designed.  The next 
step is to solicit bids from contractors and choose someone to build the 
building, which will take at least another two to three months.  Adding in the 
time to approve the architect's design, the contractor would be selected during 
the summer of 1999, possibly not until August. While construction could begin 
before the winter of 1999, depending upon weather conditions, the roof would 
have to be up before construction could continue during the winter.  Therefore, 
construction could be delayed until the summer of 2000.  If everything goes 
smoothly, the new school could open in the Fall of 2000, but it is more likely 
that the building would not be ready for occupancy for another year, in the Fall
of 2001. By that time, we should be re-examining the distribution of the 
population in the school district. If the school cannot be built on land the 
District already owns, additional time will be needed to find and purchase a 
suitable site.  Additionally, the timeline I've projected is building an 
elementary school.  A high school, which would be larger and more complicated, 
would take longer.

It may be that building new schools is the best solution in the long run, but 
we, the citizens and parents in the district, will not be able to decide that 
until the current analysis is completed, which means that we could not consider 
a bond issue before June of 1999 and a building could not be opened before the 
Fall of 2001, at the earliest.

December 1997.
Joseph L. Gelinas.