My second year in Britton, Britton’s MEAP (Michigan Education Assessment Program) scores ranked highest in the county in eight of the nine reported areas. The scores covered a multitude of grades in a variety of subjects. Reporters wanted to know our secret. How had I led such a change in such a short amount of time? I hadn’t. The stars just aligned.
During that same year the local coffee shop closed. I asked the cafeteria staff to pull out our fifty cup pot and purchase a four slice toaster. We invited the coffee group to drink in our cafeteria each morning. We provided a loaf of bread, butter, a jar of jam, and took donations to cover our expenses. If we fell short, we asked them to step up, which they did. Sometimes our bus drivers joined the group after their morning run, and the village maintenance staff of two was always on hand. I dropped in from time to time to get a pulse on the community because this group was tied to everything.
My background as an elementary school principal helped me reexamine Britton’s efforts to help students learn to read. I didn’t like the single reading teacher approach the district implemented. I believed we could provide more service, and gain more benefit, through alternative methods. I took several teachers to investigate programs offered by other districts. In the end we adopted two. One provided incentives to students to read on their own, and the second provided one on one mentors with individually prescribed instruction.
I reassigned a staff member to lead the reading mentor program. We needed volunteers to make the program work, and she was well known in the community. She came from a large family and had a willingness to make the ask to anyone. I suggested she start her recruitment efforts down in the cafeteria with the “coffee group”. Within a couple of years, she had over one hundred reading mentors working one on one with students.
The cooperative football program went well so we added boys and girls cooperative track teams in the spring of 94. The following fall we added a new opportunity for students, cross country. Over the next couple of years we combined our softball and baseball teams and added golf. Each modification encouraged more students to become involved and community pride increased. We shared the glory of Friday night even when we played golf on Tuesday afternoon.
In 1994 Michigan changed the major source of school funding from property tax to a two-cent increase in the sales tax, and two years later, adopted schools of choice for Michigan parents and students. It was the perfect storm for Britton. We were having success in the classroom, expanding athletic opportunities for students, allowing students to move from one district to another, and reducing resident’s school property tax rate for homeowners from 40.25 to 6. Britton homeowners with a State Equalized Value (SEV) of $50,000 saw their annual school property taxes drop from $2,000 to $300. Business boomed.
One afternoon, after a meeting of the county superintendents, the Adrian Superintendent and I were talking in the parking lot. Al asked, “How do you think choice is going to work out.”
“I’m a winner and you’re a loser.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re drugs, guns and thugs, and I’m mom and apple pie.”
“We don’t have drugs, guns and thugs.”
“You don’t have to have them. People think you do, so you do. Perception is everything.”
My parking lot prediction was correct. Parents requested their sons and daughters come to Britton, and we accommodated as many as physically possible. Troubles in the larger neighboring districts, helped Britton grow in numbers. We were a safe place for students and a winner in the school of choice sweepstakes. Our neighbors in Hillsdale and Jackson Counties followed a similar pattern. Large districts lost students while smaller ones gained.
A law suit instituted by several Michigan schools fifteen years prior to my arrival finally settled. The class action lawsuit argued that asbestos tile floors were endangering school attendees health. Over time many of the districts dropped out because of lack of progress and hope, or through indifference from changing district leaders who were required to file supplemental documentation on an annual basis. The dropouts helped those who remained reap more money. The funding allowed us to replace all the tile floors in the district.
“Reduce the use” monies became available through a Consumers Energy program. We applied and were able to replace all of our lighting and our cafeteria coolers and freezer with little impact upon district funds. As we expanded our offerings, and improved our facilities, more parents asked to be part of the program through schools of choice. We needed more space and asked for community financial support to build additional classrooms. We shared our plan with our growing staff of volunteer mentors, and they helped us garner the votes. We grew but were not going to get BIG.
Increased numbers, and lower property taxes, made it easier to ask the community for financial help. In addition to new classrooms, we retrofitted an old shop to create two labs, one for business classes and one for technology classes to offer programs like robotics, and built a chemistry lab with state of the art equipment.
The football team we built with Deerfield in 1993 made it to the state playoffs in 1999. It was a huge deal for both communities. We had reporters from around the State and TV coverage from Detroit and Toledo. The story always led the same way. How could two arch rivals put aside their personal pride to form a common team? The response was easy, “We did it for the kids.”
About that same time we purchased twenty-three acres of farmland adjacent to the school site. Three brothers each inherited portions of their father’s farm. The brother who owned the parcel adjacent to school agreed to sell his to us. We leased the land to a second brother to raise corn and soybeans on alternating years until we decided to develop it. Some people thought we were crazy to agree to a purchase price of $3,000 an acre for a parcel of land-locked land. It adjoined us and was the only land available should we need to grow. We planned to use our existing athletic fields for additional classroom space, and build a new athletic complex on the twenty-three acres. When districts to our east and west purchased land for their new school sites for over a million dollars each, our $69,000 purchase didn’t look so crazy after all.
Seemingly unrelated acts often pay big dividends.
TBC