From 1997 to 2010, voters in the Chippewa Valley school district approved all four tax-supported bonds placed on the ballot by the school board. Their votes authorized property tax increases that cost taxpayers nearly a half billion dollars ($445.7 million).

The string of “yes” votes ended in May 2017, when 59 percent of voters said “no” to another property tax increase, this one to support $90 million in new borrowing. Despite the substantial margin of that defeat, Chippewa Valley voters will face another tax hike on the Nov. 6 ballot, this one to service the debt on a new $97 million bond.

District officials have named the tax hike proposal “Safe Schools, Strong Schools,” and the spending it pays for would include things like purchasing security cameras and replacing door locks.

“Keeping students safe has never been more important, and our top priority at Chippewa Valley Schools is the safety of our students, staff and families,” said Ron Roberts, Chippewa Valley Schools superintendent, in a press release. “While we are doing many things well on school safety, more can and must be done to face continually evolving school threats.”

Roberts didn’t respond to an email seeking comment.

One parent was bothered that Chippewa Valley requested that voters take on more debt just 18 months after they rejected a similar request.

“We said ‘no’ to a Chippewa Valley schools $89.9 million-dollar bond proposal last May 2017, and without regard for the $442 million dollar existing bond project debt, they have now put a $97 million dollar proposal on the November 2018 ballot,” said Grace Caporuscio, who lives in the Chippewa Valley district. She continued:

“Although a district letter to parents states, ‘Security analysis found the district has kept up with security and safety best practices,’ they have repackaged this proposal for ‘safety and security,’ playing off parent’s fear of potential school violence. In addition to minor security items, the district lists other necessities such as $1,500 toilet partitions, $11,000 scoreboards and $25,000 to cover glass block windows. ... We can’t trust them anymore.”

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, Chippewa Valley School District had the second-highest amount of long-term debt in Michigan, behind Detroit’s public school district.

Chippewa Valley taxpayers owed $488.1 million on long-term debt taken out by the district as of 2014, the latest year for which federal data is available. That came to $29,625 in debt per student.

Detroit’s school district had the highest amount in per pupil debt at $38,927. L’Anse Creuse Public Schools came in third at $21,621.

Over a 13-year span from 1997 to 2010, Chippewa Valley school district voters approved tax increases to support nearly a half billion dollars in debt for infrastructure upgrades and to erect new buildings. Voters approved a $83.4 million bond in 1997. Another $104.1 million debt issue was passed in 2001. Voters approved a $168.4 million bond in 2004, and another $89.8 million bond in 2010.

Recent reports on the MLive news site ranked the Michigan public school districts whose enrollment has been most affected by public school choice and charter schools.

MLive ranked the districts based on the percentage of public schoolchildren who live with a school district’s jurisdiction and are attending its schools, based on 2017 enrollment data. The number who weren’t attending the district’s schools was used as an indicator of how many were instead enrolled in a charter school or another district.

What MLive did not report was the academic performance of districts from which many students had left.

According to the MLive enrollment ranking system, the 10 school districts with the lowest percentage of resident schoolchildren attending its schools operated a total of 127 school buildings. Of these, 84 received a F grade on the most recent edition of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy’s public school report card, published in 2016.

This report card factors in the socioeconomic background of student bodies when measuring how much learning is advanced by the school children attend, rather than how high or low their starting point may have been.

Two out of every three schools within those 10 low-resident enrollment school districts were failing when compared to Michigan schools whose student bodies have similar socioeconomic backgrounds.

The school districts with the highest percentage of resident schoolchildren attending their own schools operated a combined 38 schools, of which just three received an F on the same socioeconomically adjusted report card.

The MLive data appears to support the theory that school choice affords the greatest benefits to children whose parents would otherwise have to see them attend the possibly substandard public school to which they are assigned.

A Mackinac Center 2013 study on school choice had similar findings.

“This study [2013] finds that students enter districts that have higher graduation rates and higher test scores,” said Ben DeGrow, director of education policy at the Mackinac Center.