Community Corner

School Board Candidate Questions Dexter Schools' Use of Taxpayer Dollars

Local resident Shawn Letwin launches campaign for school board trustee.

Editor's note: This week Dexter Patch profiled each of the four candidates running for school board on May 3. Today we conclude our coverage of the candidates with a profile on Shawn Letwin.

Candidate: Shawn Letwin

Office Sought:  Dexter Board of Education trustee

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Residence: Webster Township

Occupation: Substitute teacher; Washtenaw County park manager; Eastern Michigan University meet manager operator

Education: Bachelor's degree from Eastern Michigan University

Find out what's happening in Dexterwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Previous Elected Office: Dexter Community Aquatic Club (board member); Ann Arbor Swim Club (board member); Athletic Booster Club of Dexter (secretary).

Two Key Issues:

1. Transparency

The first key issue (transparency) I believe is the greatest challenge facing the Dexter school district right now. The school board ensures that the students get the greatest value for what it obtains with the taxpayers' money. The board also ensures that we maintain the greatest value on what we spend the taxpayers money on and that the value of what we spend the taxpayers money on is retained, too.

I believe that the school board could have done a better job in achieving these results and I believe that I am the best candidate to do better.

During the last two bond initiatives we have seen a high school built where we did not obtain value, maintain value or retain value with the taxpayers' money. This includes, but is not limited to: poor design features at the high school which have required over $1 million in repairs and replacements only six years after the school was built; and the recent decision to build locker room facilities that was originally expected to cost $80,000 but ended up costing more than $300,000.

This new locker room will be used primarily by an outside swim club, and is only needed when there is a concurrent sporting event. When faced with cost reductions in the building of the entire high school complex, the board chose to pull over $500,000 of budgeted equipment from the classroom instead of obtaining effective cost reductions in the CPA. This resulted in not being able to fund equipment in the library to deter the theft of the library books, and now the student library has lost over $10,000 in educational materials.

Also, six years ago the new high school had state-of-the-art PowerPoint projectors in every classroom, which were then replaced a few short years later with even more expensive “Smart Boards."  As a school board member, I would propose that a more prudent approach in how we manage our facilities is necessary.

The current school board also approved the switching to trimesters five years ago, resulting in scheduling inefficiencies of more than $700,000 per year. Recently a near unanimous vote by high school teachers indicated that trimesters are very ineffective in achieving the educational goals of our students and that the district should switch back to semesters.

Last spring, the board and administration stated that they required contract negotiation  to save almost $1 million in order to have a balanced budget, but they unanimously approved Superintendent Mary Marshall's recommendation to give all teachers 5 percent more for health insurance with no employee contribution at all.

Marshall also recommended (again, unanimously approved by the board) that all revenues that exceed expenses at the end of the year will be given to the teachers. Also, the single-tier busing service was projected to save more than $400,000 per year but has already resulted in more than $250,000 of unbudgeted expenses.

The administration and board unanimously rejected a proposal by the transportation union that would have achieved the required cost reductions, kept the two-tier busing system and saved many jobs of those within our community. This is not my idea of a community-based solution.  

Finally, we have spent almost $1 million over the last 10 years for a sheriff liaison position that has had no job description, no yearly goals nor any yearly reviews for the efficacy of the that position.  Marshall said so herself that the position is “… not related to a specific mandate to have such a person on staff.”

With no more new money coming into the school district, the district has allocated $500,000 to be available for spending this year on the International Baccalaureate program even though the community never asked for this. There are only a couple of dozen Dexter students who are interested and the district counselors recently stated that our graduates with advanced placement classes are not kept from admittance to universities by any IB applicant. Not to mention the fact that the Washtenaw Intermediate School District is starting its own IB program that our students could take advantage of.  

Although the IB folks recommend that a complete feasibility study should be performed, to date, the district has done no such study and does not appear to have one planned. So, whether the students, parents and taxpayers want an IB program, it appears that the board has decided we need one.

2. Election date changes

I find it very disturbing that although the board was confronted by an electorate last year that wanted the district to move school board elections from May to November in order to save precious monies (almost $100,000 spent unnecessarily to date),  the district once again decided not to move elections for at least another year or two. These monies are needed for education, not political maneuvering.

How do you plan on addressing these issues?

Should I gain the trust and confidence of the voters in this election who support me, the entire community can rest assured that I will continue to ask the questions that will keep me and the entire school board accountable to the taxpayers.

We need more people on the board who pose the questions that require supporting data/information and two-way dialogue with the taxpayers in order to have decisions made that will result in every possible taxpayer dollar being used to educate the children of this district.  

It is very important that we ensure every decision made will obtain value, maintain value and retain value in Dexter Community Schools.  Part of this will require forums to allow the taxpayers to be more engaged and heard from, more transparency of all district information, greater ease of accessibility to district information and that the information is presented in a timely and consistent basis on the websites for the district, each school building and each department.

Candidate Shawn Letwin will host open houses to talk with voters at the Dexter District Library on April 19 from 1:30-2:30 p.m.; April 21 from 9:15-10:15 a.m.; April 27 from 10-11 a.m.; April 29 from 1:30-2:20 p.m.; and May 1 from 3:30-4:30 p.m.


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