By Meg Peters
Review Co-Editor
The last time Lake Orion Community Schools re-districted was in 2002 after the opening of Paint Creek Elementary and Oakview Middle School.
According to administrators, it is high time for another.
On Monday night the public had a chance to address the newest discussions on redistricting, but for the very opposite reason. The district is looking to shrink, not expand.
To discover which school, or schools, will close, LOCS hired Plante Moran CRESA at $25,000 to recommend the new district footprint. Any and all changes will take place at the beginning of the 2017-18 school year.
The final report will become available in June or July, and regular updates will be provided at future board meetings, Plane Moran CRESA representative Paul Wills said.
Plants Moran has a three-step process to determine the most practical building, or buildings to close.
First the study will look at the district’s vacant properties, and whether or not it’s the proper time to sell them.
“Selling a 15-or 20-acre parcel to a residential developer which could potentially build homes would then increase that population of potential students that could come to the district,” Wills said.
Secondly, Wills and his team will look at enrollment projections and demographics.
Plants Moran’s CRESA division, which is the facility consulting capital projects group, looks at the total numbers of students in the building, across all grades, and creates a matrix that shows the utilization of each school.
“I think the biggest point is what is the square footage of the total operating cost of the district relative to its 1.5 million square feet? Then, how the pupil enrollment is affected by the funding mechanism? But more importantly is where the current utilization standpoint is and how can we improve that to uphold those operational dollars?” he said.
In the last ten years Michigan has lost 400,000 students, simply because they have not been born, and of those Oakland County has lost 40,000.
Lake Orion’s ‘aging-out’ population, as it has been coined, has demonstrated that over the last several years more seniors have been graduating than kindergarteners have been enrolling. The gap per year is about 120 students, Wills said.
Or in other words, that’s about a 400 to 500 student differential from where the district was five to ten years ago.
Each elementary school holds 400 to 600 kids.
State standards recommend each school to be 85 to 90 percent utilized.
While the focus schools are all at a capacity, several of the neighborhood schools are not.
“What’s interesting is you may actually be utilizing those individual classrooms, but there may be a specialty program in a full-size classroom that maybe should be in a resource room,” Wills said.
Closing a school could save the district up to $500,000 a year, but also around ten percent in annual operations costs, he said.
Plant Moran will also assess the current development in Orion Township.
“The question is, can you build more homes than the decline of the birthrate in the next five years?” he said.
Plants Moran has nearly 55 school district clients, and of those clients, Wills said 10 to 12 have closed schools in the last ten years.
Lastly, Plante Moran will look at facility use, and see if there is a better program, and district boundary, that could utilize buildings at their full capacity.
There is also talk of repurposing a building and saving it for future growth, such as the administration building, or centralizing early childhood programs into one space.
No final decisions have been determined on which school or schools will be closing. The decision will come only after Plante Moran completes its study in the summer, sometime next fall.
Focus Schools
Much of the public participation centered on the possibility of changing up the focus school concept.
Many people expressed concerns about whether or not two of the focus schools, Orion Oaks Elementary and Stadium Drive Elementary, would be dissolved back into neighborhood schools. Orion Oaks’ focus is a multi-age concept with block classes, and Stadium Drive’s emphasis centers around the fine arts specializing in theater and drama. The other focus school, Carpenter Elementary, offers a year-round schedule, but has been thought to be kept just the same.
The focus school concept was created 20 years ago.
“I guarantee that less people will move to Lake Orion [if the focus school concept is eliminated],” Orion Township resident and Orion Oaks parent Meagan Kopitzki said. “With choice there is a buy-in. With being told where to go just because it’s the closest school there’s not.”
Orion Oaks parent and resident Erin Pawlaczyk feels similarly. She is also a West Bloomfield teacher.
“I’m watching us [at West Bloomfield] day in and day out trying to create things to attract people to the district. We already have three great things in Lake Orion, and that is we have a choice,” she said. “As far as I can tell we don’t advertise that at all.”
Assistant Superintendent of Teaching and Learning Heidi Mercer said that the focus school concept is only under review at this point, and any rearrangement could mean potential growth for the district.
“It’s an opportunity to review everything we are doing,” she said. “Maybe it’s that we have more choice. It’s being open minded enough.”
Still, some parents preferred their neighborhood schools.
Mercer said there is no data to prove one school outperforms another.
“There are myths that our focus schools are outperforming our neighborhood schools. That data does not show that. There is no specific consistency that shows one school is outperforming another.”
Mercer also said that intra-district choice is something that will be considered and answered when more information is available.
Sinking Fund
Mercer said retaining Lake Orion’s programs and attractiveness is dependent upon the district, like many of the neighboring districts, securing some type of funding.
Assistant Superintendent of Business and Finance John Fitzgerald then introduced the Sinking Fund concept.
A voter approved sinking fund is not a bond, is not a loan, but instead is the cash on hand paid by district taxpayers to fund facility needs, repairs and potentially technology.
For the last couple months the district has been discussing a possible 2 mill sinking fund, or building and sites fund as it is also called. For a home with a market value of $200,000 the annual tax increase would be $200. The board was expected to adopt the August 2 2-mill sinking fund at the board meeting Wednesday after The Review went to press.
While some residents agreed a sinking fund was necessary to maintain concepts like the focus schools, others questioned the tax hike.
One 85-year-old Lake Orion resident said he doesn’t have any kids attending Lake Orion schools, but he sure is a taxpayer.
“For my one house that I’ve lived in since 1978, that year my total taxes—everything—were $615. In 2015 my total taxes were $3,159. That’s a 500 percent increase if I’m right,” he said.
Administrators reminded the public that state funding changed with the approval of Proposal A, which reduced property taxes for taxpayers and put the responsibility of facility maintenance back on the district. In order to make those repairs and replacements, Lake Orion either has to dip into their fund equity, which it has been depleting since the last bond failure, or ask for a sinking fund, which is not uncommon.
“One thing we have to keep in mind as we proceed, those districts that have passed bonds and sinking funds, that’s how they are able to maintain their unique programming,” Mercer said.