AAPS School Board Candidates talk upcoming election at forum

The Student Advocacy Center of Michigan hosted the 2024 Ann Arbor Public Schools School Board Candidate Forum virtually Tuesday evening. The forum allowed candidates running for the school board to discuss their plans for the future of Ann Arbor schools and answer questions from the general public.

Peri Stone-Palmquist, executive director of the Student Advocacy Center, and Stacy Ebron, a founding member of Ann Arbor School Parents Intent on Racial Equity, discussed the goals of the candidate forum at the start of the meeting.

“We’re going to discuss what’s at stake in this election,” Stone-Palmquist said. “We’re going to ask the school board candidates questions so that you can understand their priorities and their vision. Our students continue to struggle with academic and social emotional needs. Despite the needs for mental health and supportive services, our schools have too few people and lack financial resources needed to respond to the need.” 

Ebron said this school board election is crucial for the future of Ann Arbor Public Schools, especially in terms of how the district allocates funding.

“We need candidates who are really engaged in how that money is spent locally,” Ebron said. “We need candidates who are committed to transparency and really having things like town halls with parents and caregivers to share information about the school’s budget and really get feedback.”

There are currently six candidates — Leslie Wilkins, Ernesto Querijero, Glynda Wilks, Megan Kanous, Don Wilkerson and Eric Sturgis — running for three open seats for a four-year term on the school board.

Patricia Davis, a caregiver in Ann Arbor, asked the candidates to discuss their top policy priorities. Kanous was the first to explain her campaign priorities, which include collaboration with a variety of Ann Arbor stakeholders. 

“We need to be collaborative with all of our education stakeholders, with groups such as yourselves, our teaching community, our members, our students and our caregivers, so that we can create a plan and then get that into the budget, so that we can make sure that we are holding ourselves accountable and we are putting our funds where we, as a community, decide to prioritize them,” Kanous said. 

Wilkerson said his priorities include stabilizing school system budgets. AAPS recently faced $25 million in budget cuts due largely to decreased enrollment and increased staff hiring and salaries as a result of the pandemic. The school board’s handling of the budget crisis has been met with criticism from the Ann Arbor community.

“My top priority would be stabilizing finances,” Wilkerson said. “It’s critical, and it’s going to drive our ability to accomplish anything in the district, whether it’s supporting students’ needs, attracting or retaining strong educators with competitive wages or innovative programming.” 

Wilkins spoke on the importance of teacher feedback and giving teachers and staff the opportunity to share their concerns with the school board.

“If the board is able to show that they’re listening to teachers and staff and then taking that feedback into action items and then following up to see if those action items actually did what the teachers and staff wanted us to do … then that will hopefully go a long way toward it,” Wilkins said.

In response to the same question, Querijero, a professor at Washtenaw Community College, discussed the importance of forming strong relationships with the teachers.

“So when we start to talk about teacher advocacy, I have a very good baseline being an active teacher who goes to the classroom every day, like all of our teachers do, to do the good work that public school district should do, which is to teach students and let them be their best selves,” Querijero said. “If those teachers have something to report, they have many avenues to do that, one through their union leadership, or they can always come and talk directly.”

On the topic of increasing accessibility and accountability within the school board, Sturgis said if elected, he would make school board reports more accessible to the public.

“Why don’t we have data about the discipline reports, the equity reports?” Sturgis said. “Releasing stuff like that to the public, that’s transparency, holding yourself accountable.”

Ebron encouraged everyone to vote early for school board candidates in the upcoming election. Early voting opens Sept. 26 and the deadline to vote in person ends Nov. 4 at 4 p.m.

“It’s really important to participate in our school board elections,” Ebron said. “We need you to vote.” 

Daily Staff Reporter Halle Pratt can be reached at hallehap@umich.edu.

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