A Michigan school district employee told volunteers at an 1867 historical school building near Ann Arbor that serves as a living museum for elementary children to stop using the terms “boy” and “girl.”

Kara Davis, executive director of teaching and learning at the Saline Area School District, told staff at the Weber Blaess one-room school that using gender terms is a harmful practice.

“I am reaching out because I have received feedback that the docents and/or school masters are using binary/gendered language (‘boy’/‘girl’) to orient students in Weber Blaess activities,” Davis said in the May 16 email obtained by CapCon. “I am confident that all volunteers want to create the best experience possible and would never intentionally exclude students. I also recognize that there is historical accuracy to this practice, however I want to ensure we aren’t replicating harmful practices on students of today to model what happened historically.”

The Saline Area Schools Historic Preservation Foundation operates the school building, which is staffed mostly by retirees who volunteer. The school was moved on June 19, 2002, from its original site in Lodi Township to Woodland Drive.

Volunteer docents and schoolmasters provide an experience of attending school from 1890 to 1950.

Davis advised staff to use the words “students,” “children,” and “visitors” rather than “boys" and “girls.”

“Docents can explain that teachers historically may have organized their students by ‘boy’/‘girl’ but should not actually employ it as a strategy,” Davis wrote.

The district hasn’t yet responded to a request for comment.

“SAS has been working diligently to reflect on embedded experiences through an equity lens and adjust where needed to be more inclusive of and responsive to diverse identities,” the email said. “This shift is a small but important one in order to continue working toward creating safe, inclusive spaces for all.”

For example, Davis suggested dividing students into groups by birth month instead of gender.

“If students need to be divided into groups, examples of doing so without causing harm to transgender and nonbinary students is ‘Students with birthdays from January to June on the right; students with birthdays from July to August line up on the left,’” Davis wrote.

Michigan’s Growing Together report found less than 33% of Michigan students are proficient in reading or math in the fourth and eighth grades, and grade-four reading proficiency for Black students in Michigan is at only 10%, lower than in any growing peer state.

State agencies moved many employees to remote work during the COVID-19 pandemic. It is hard to know the long-term financial impact of that change, especially since the current state budget omits a reporting requirement from previous years.

The omnibus appropriations act for the 2023 fiscal year required agencies to compile quarterly reports on the number of full-time employees working remotely. They were also required to estimate the net savings incurred by remote work and any reduction in office space. The current budget contains no such requirement. A brief March 2023 report from the State Budget Office does not provide much certainty.

The share of employees working remotely varied greatly across agencies and departments, according to numbers compiled by the Mackinac Center. Only 18% of employees in the Department of Corrections worked remotely, perhaps due to the need for guards to report to prisons. Fewer than one-third of employees of the Secretary of State (30%) worked remotely. In seven agencies, by contrast, over 90% of employees worked remotely. These included the Department of Education, the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, and the Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy. All 68 members of the executive office worked remotely.

Just over half of Michigan state employees worked remotely.

Each department determines its own remote work policy. Some departments are fully remote while others require employees to be in the office two or three days each week.

Expenses for building operations increased by $583,500 over the previous year, according to the most recent available data. The report said that price increases for janitorial and security services contributed to the increase, but building operational expenses are expected to decrease over the long term.

One surprising point from the report is that the state’s overall building expenses increased in 2022 after workers were offered long-term remote work. The state reported a $583,500 net increase in building operations in 2022 compared to 2021. It experienced an $851,594 decrease in operations in 2021.

The state budget office did not respond to an email asking for comment.

Utility expenses increased by $1.4 million in 2022, while they declined by $480,943 the previous year. Commodity price increases, combined with higher electricity and natural gas rates, were blamed for the increase.

The report said the state government owns or leases more than 41.5 million square feet of space. The amount of space decreased by 54,000 square feet in the 2022 fiscal year, and the Department of Technology, Management and Budget downsized or declined to renew 24 leases. The State Budget Office said the change saved roughly $18.7 million.

Spending on office supplies saw a $3.3 million net decrease and spending on information technology increased by $11 million.