Dave Rabbideau

I hope you will join me on Monday, November 17, and/or Wednesday, November 19, for an exciting and important dialogue about the future of Alpena Public Schools. Monday night is the Board of Education’s regularly scheduled Workshop meeting, and Wednesday night is a community forum. Both meetings will be held in the Wildcat Den at Alpena High School and will start at 5:30 p.m.

The topic for these meetings is the long-term facilities plan for Alpena Public Schools.

As part of our Strategic Plan, we have contracted with Kingscott Associates to be proactive. We want to reimagine what education in Alpena might look like in the next three, five, ten years, and beyond. We are not undertaking this work because of a crisis. In fact, it is just the opposite.

Thanks to years of careful financial management and the incredible, consistent support of our voters, Alpena Public Schools is in a stable position. This gives us the luxury of not having to make dramatic changes in a short period of time, as has happened at times over the past 50 years. We have a rare and valuable opportunity to be thoughtful, deliberate, and forward-thinking.

This process is grounded in Stewardship, a core goal area of our Strategic Plan. While we can’t predict the future, we can identify long-established historical patterns and existing challenges that inform our decisions. The primary pattern is student enrollment. In 1973, enrollment peaked at 9,282 students; the official audited enrollment for this fall is 3647. The primary challenge is our geography. We are the 8th largest geographical school district in Michigan, and we spend over $2.5 million a year on transportation.

We are asking you to engage in this new dialogue because our district has a proven, public track record of fiscal responsibility. I want to be clear about this, especially for those who may not have a daily connection to our schools. We are eternally grateful to this community for demonstrating its support at the polls, first with the 2020 Safe, Warm, Dry Bond and again with the 2024 operating millage. We take that trust seriously, and our actions prove it.

We have been excellent stewards of the community’s resources. For example, at the same time we were implementing the Safe, Warm, Dry Bond work, we proactively took advantage of a no-cost-to-taxpayers $7.1 million Trane Energy Bond. This separate bond, fully paid for through energy rebates, replaced lighting, plumbing, and heating infrastructure. This smart, parallel move not only saves the district upwards of $200,000 in energy costs annually, but, crucially, it freed up $7.1 million in funds within the Safe, Warm, Dry Bond. Essentially, we gained $7.1 million in improvements at no additional cost to taxpayers.

That kind of proactive financial management has continued. During the Safe, Warm, Dry bond work, we made the difficult but necessary choice to switch construction management firms when we learned our first partner was not advocating effectively on behalf of our taxpayers. The results with our new partner, Clark Construction, have been amazing. Through their tight oversight and our conservative budgeting, we are now able to stretch taxpayer dollars farther, completing projects we originally had to cross off the list.

This history of stewardship is the exact reason I want to address a question I anticipate being asked: “If you’ve done all this great work on our buildings, why are we talking about changing our infrastructure now? Did you not plan well? Did you waste our money?”

These are fair questions. The answer is that the Safe, Warm, Dry Bond was a specific tool for a specific job. It was a promise to make our existing facilities safe, healthy, and functional. It was about preserving our assets and protecting the community’s investment, which we have done.

This new process, reimagining the district, is the next logical step. It’s not about a failure of the bond; it’s about a recognition of our 50-year enrollment reality. The bond work was about updating and fixing the house we have. This new work is about asking if this is the right size and shape of house for our family, both today and for the next 20 years.

We can, and must, do both. We must be good stewards of our current buildings while also being brave enough to ask if our current footprint is the most effective and efficient way to reimagine the way we offer education.

At the meetings, Kingscott Associates will present their findings and some future-focused scenarios for us to consider. I must be very clear: these scenarios are not a “choose one” option. Rather, they are intended to spark our curiosity and creativity.

I believe this work offers us a profound opportunity. In a time where it can feel like our community is divided, the success of our children and the health of our schools is a cause that can, and should, unite us. This is our chance to rally around a common purpose.

Our time together next week is to engage our entire community in a dialogue about our future. We need your voice. I hope you will come, listen, ask hard questions, and be part of the solution.