Interview with Don Wotruba, Executive Director of the Michigan Association of School Boards

In this episode, David sits down with Don Wotruba, UP native and Executive Director of the Michigan Association of School Boards, one of Lansing’s biggest educational associations and one of the most powerful in the state.

In the podcast, Don discusses the educational policy work he is currently involved in–including managing the difficulties with mask mandates and other COVID-related policies that are controversial within communities and the tough decisions school districts are having to make.

Transcript

David Haynes:

Hello, everyone. Welcome to Rural Insights podcast series. Today we’re very pleased to have Don Wotruba with us, who is the Executive Director of the Michigan Association of School Boards, one of Lansing’s biggest educational associations, and one of the most powerful in the state. I’m proud to say, Don grew up in the UP, in Carney. You can read all about that on our Rural Voices part of our website. His column is in there. Before we go into educational issues and school boards, Don, how did you wind up in Lansing? You go from Carney to where, to where?

Don Wotruba:

Thanks for having me first, David, I appreciate it. Appreciate being able to share with your Rural Insights audience. For me, yeah, came out of a small school district, Carney-Nadeau, in Southern Menominee, or mid-Menominee County. Went to college at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo. Probably like many kids that were 17 years old in the UP, wanting to get as far away from the UP as I could. Now have since, in my adulthood, realize the great things that it offers, both to residents, and for us that have left, the opportunity to come back. I actually did a Secondary Ed, English Major, for a while in college. I did an internship in Lansing, at the Capitol Western. Had a big program in that. I interned with the Michigan Association of School Boards.I commonly joked that I realized I could screw up a lot more kids’ lives as a lobbyist, than I could as a teacher. That wasn’t my intent, of course, but you as a former lobbyist understand that.

David Haynes:

Yes sir.

Don Wotruba:

I then changed my major on to education, and got a job with a state representative, out of the Western UP, Paul Tesanovich. Did that for a few years, and moved over to MSB at 24 years ago.

David Haynes:

24 years already. Well, that’s amazing. I enjoy over all these years of meeting people who have moved from here to Lansing. Of course, as you know, over the years, there were people like Dominic Jacobetti, who spent a lot of time placing people around from the UP, in the state civil service and political jobs. It was one of his goals. You still meet them in second and third generations of people. It’s very helpful, also to the UPP.

Don Wotruba:

Pat Gagliardi was one of my internships, and he’s who helped get me started in Lansing. I still appreciate that, for recommending me.

David Haynes:

Pat has done a lot of that too. He absolutely. I did a video podcast, with Pat and Mitch Irwin a few months ago, and talked a lot about that. It was really… Pat has done a great job. Gag’s worked very hard at that. So did all the UP reps, Paul Tesanovich, and others. Okay. I’m glad you’re down there, and let’s get into some issues. There’s an old saying we heard for years, among all of us in public policy and politics, that one of the hardest, and maybe worst elected jobs around, is a school board member, because you are local. You can’t go out anywhere. You can go out for a beer. The thing goes on a Friday night, and someone’s got to come over and talk to you about what went on at the Negaunee School Board, or the Marquette School Board, or something.

You’re doing serious, serious work. Setting an educational policy for your town, for your city, for your region. It’s a very hard job. Right now, in that UP, we are having a lot of conversations about masking at School Boards, I hear, are flooded with pro-maskers and anti-maskers, and some of them have been pretty hot. Some of them have had to have police stationed there. Could you talk about what’s going on with school boards around the state, on masking and not masking, and maybe state policy on it?

Don Wotruba:

Yeah, absolutely. The last 18 months, as I think, been the roughest time that I have been around, on school board members. With the pandemic, it was the spring of the year you’re closing down schools, everybody was. Then I was coming back and deciding, “Are you going to be open or not open?” Masks, of course, were required. As an organization, we always argue for local control. Let the local boards know. Let them do their job, and decide what their local community wants for their kids, and for their schools. On the flip side of that this year, what we’re seeing particularly without a state mandate, is a lot of decisions being made, maybe not in the public health space, but now in the political space. Not R & D political, but the politics, as you mentioned, of people showing up at a board meeting, and the loudest voice wins. Or, how many people are on Facebook, beating up the school district, or telling the school district what to do.

That has become the hard thing for school board members and superintendents is trying to figure out what’s the right thing to do. We don’t have experts in public health on school boards. It’s not what we do. That has made it difficult. We’ve tried to work with public Health Departments, to try to do some guidance. Now the struggle for boards is the CDC is recommending masking for school-aged children, whether they’re vaccinated or not. The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services is also recommending this. Recently, Dr. Khaldun has come out and actually said it should be a mandate, even though that’s not her call to make. It’s either Department of Health and Human Services. That’s put districts in a bad spot.

You’ve got a bunch of statewide and national public health experts saying, “You should have masks on your kids.” In a lot of communities, and I think the UP and rural areas, particularly, you’re getting a lot of pushback from voters that show up at Board Meetings. Yet, when you look at counties in the UP, you’ve got some high spread counties. At least new numbers coming and are showing spread in that area, lower vaccination rates than other parts of the state. They’re not alone. This is happening in every community, across the state of Michigan. Doesn’t matter if it’s rural or urban, this is a real discussion that they’re all facing.

David Haynes:

What’s going on? You and I, before this, that we did the session, talk a little bit about what Allegan County downstate is a rural area, becoming more metropolitan as years go by, but certainly it has a rural component, and Grand Traverse. Can you talk a little bit about those rural areas?

Don Wotruba:

Yeah. It’s been interesting to watch. In those cases, the local public Health Departments have stepped in. We’ve had that now in three counties in the state, where they’ve stepped in and said, “Kids that are unable to be vaccinated, so in essence 12, and under, that they should mandatorily wear masks, and they have passed as Health Departments, and mandated mask wearing for kids under that age to protect them. We’re seeing with the Delta variant an increase of sickness amongst that age group. Those Health Departments, Kalamazoo, Allegan, and Genesee… Allegan, as you said, is a more rural county, and they made that decision. On the flip side in, Grand Traverse county, recently their county commission stepped in, and they are prohibiting their Health Department. That’s a weird space, at least from my perspective. There you have partisanly-elected individuals on the county board stepping in, and in essence telling one of the entities that fund that local Health Department, that have the medical expertise, “You can’t weigh in, in this space.”

I do think we’ll probably see some more counties, particularly for those aged under 12, we’re seeing districts in different pockets around the state, doing that on their own, or just masking K-12, much like they were last year. Part of that is watching what’s happening in other states. I’m Indiana, a rural state just to ourselves, right? They’ve now seen schools, they didn’t do masks. They’ve now had to shut down schools for two weeks, right at the beginning of the school year, right after they started, because the numbers have exploded. They go to quarantine. It’s 600 kids quarantine, and all of a sudden you don’t have enough kids. I think some of these schools are looking at it and saying, “It’s how we’re going to keep your kid in school through the whole year. It’s inconvenient, but they’re going to wear a mask, but they’re likely going to stay in school. Otherwise, without masks, there’s a risk that they’re going to come in and out, in and out, just like they did last year. It probably won’t work as well this year, because there’s not as much virtual learning going on.”

David Haynes:

What’s the vaccination rate among school-aged children in our public schools? What is the… Is there a number, or?

Don Wotruba:

Initially, when you went down to age 16, we were around 59%. When you dropped down to the 12 to 16 year old, I think we’re hovering right around 50%. I haven’t seen a recent number on that. What happened is right at the end of the school year, they have proved that 12 to 16 and age group, a number of schools ran vaccination clinics. Then you got the summers, and depending on convenience, whether that group has grown. I haven’t heard it, but you could see maybe some districts running some vaccination clinics when school starts this fall for that age group. That could push our numbers up pretty quickly in a lot of our areas, to get that group of kids vaccinated.

David Haynes:

What are some of the differences you’re seeing in rural school districts, when facing school board members at metropolitan, let’s say? Or are they just generally… What are the same issues?

Don Wotruba:

I think that the masking thing is the same. That has become the same. What we’re seeing in urban areas, that in most cases is not hitting the rural areas, is this conversation about critical race theory. Of course, if you’re in a rural area, Northern Michigan particularly, you do have Native American populations, but not a large portion of other minorities. That’s become a national movement to what they’re saying, “Stop the teaching of something. That you’re a university guy. That critical race theory is something at a doctoral level, that even many colleges don’t touch on.” That has blown up, much like the masking in some of our… Where you’ve mentioned, we’ve had police presence at board meetings, and other things. It’s kind of a red herring, I don’t think there’s a lot of real to it, but it is an effort that thankfully our rural areas, aren’t seeing. Alpena public has become mired in a little bit, which is odd, because that’s a pretty rural community also.

Most of the rural areas are really focused on, “Hey, let’s get our kids back to school, and moving forward. Fear from parents. I think about sports. What happens with sports? I host a podcast as well. I just said, “Mark, you all from my School Athletic Association, I’m talking about. What does that look like?” They’re full steam ahead right now to have it. They’re going to leave it up to districts also, on the masking of the crowd. In your area, it’s going to be Marquette public schools to say, “Hey, we want all the spectators in a basketball game, because that’s indoors, to wear masking.” The High School Athletic Association is not going to require it, but they’re going to let the local venue make that decision.

I would assume that will be a question that comes up different than in a kid setting with schools, because of the low number of sicknesses that we’ve seen, at least in the past, in that age group. We all know what indoor sports is like in the UP, whether it be a hockey arena or a basketball court, there’s going to be some schools having that conversation. Even if they’re not masking with the kids, they might have that conversation about, “We’re putting 300 people in a close proximity next to each other. How do we want to handle that?”

David Haynes:

Yeah. We’ve had some of that in the UP. I know when I was president of the university, we had the same issue over guns, and open carry issues, over the years. We struggle with those like every other community, and I’ve worked them out. It seems this is a little harder to get done right now, because the country is so polarized, and therefore we’re all polarized. The other question I had is, it goes back to even years when I was in Lansing for the Grand Rapids School District. Wow. That’s a long time ago too. We have now 600 school districts, I think, in Michigan, and 294, I think, charter school districts, if you will, then I call districts I guess. We’ve talked for years about consolidation, and in the UP, I think is like a burrow. Someone wants to give up their own school board or their own athletic teams. Is that a conversation at all these days? Or is that a bygone discussion?

Don Wotruba:

It isn’t much of one, David. You remember the politics that surrounded. Even though a school board might take on the challenge and have the discussion, their community legislatures were always a little nervous about taking that on. Although we’ve seen it in other states, and we did it back in the sixties, here. It’s become even a worst topic to talk about right now, because the free market has pushed so far on education. I think public ed traditional districts would say, “Yeah, we will talk about it.” I can make lots of arguments about when I grew up in a school district, and it probably still only has about 280 kids. That’s not a big district. You could probably have some efficiencies.

On the flip side of that, if there’s 200 plus charter schools in the state, many of which are that size or smaller, it’s hard to argue that you should close the traditional district when you have the option of somebody opening up the doors of a charter nearby. Charters aren’t prevalent in the UP, but they are there. You have some in the Marquette area. I actually have one down by us, in the Carney area. It’s out there, but if it’s happening right now, it’s happening because the communities looked at things and made a decision that it was the right thing to do for their region, their communities. To give kids a little more option. If you’re a real small district, your options are pretty limited for your students.

David Haynes:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That’s a big legislator, from long ago, told me one time about this issue of merger of school districts. He said, “This was one of those where you won’t find a lot of profiles in courage, stepping up, no matter what the pros and the cons are. It’s one you don’t need in your life.” I don’t want to keep you too long, but what about general overview of how school funding is going? How school boards are looking at school funding issues, and any of the differences again, between rural and metropolitan?

Don Wotruba:

For rural areas, this year’s budget that the legislature and the governor put through, it was the only budget they passed. State government is still sitting without one. It is the best budget we’ve seen. They finally took out the promise of proposal A, and closed the gap in school funding, from the bottom of the top. There’s still, roughly, 45 districts out there now, that raise additional property tax to get some money beyond the max foundation. This school year, now everybody will be the same.

The next step that we’re actually taking, and there was a study done by school folks about four years ago, now. The School Finance Research Collaborative is, “Okay, now we’ve got a base level of funding. Now let’s look at the individual needs of each student.” If you have a poor student that enters your school district, maybe single parent household, high school education of the parent, compared to the dual income, dual educated parent, that kid often will start behind.

Let’s start figuring out how much additional money do we need to move that kid along the path, so that we can get them to the same place upon graduation. Do we fund enough on special ed? We’re actually getting to the meat of the conversation, to help the kids that really need it, now that we’ve gotten every district to a base level. Over the next few years, we’ve got a lot of federal money. It’s out of the COVID… Three different relief packages have come in that space. We have a real opportunity in Michigan to change how we do education. Focus more on the kid in more of a individualized education for each student, and the resources that are needed. I think in the UP, in small districts with small pupil counts, that individualized stuff is going to make a difference.

One of the other things that some of the groups, including MASB is pushing, is, “Let’s start looking at transportation again.” In the UP big districts, we spent a lot of money on transportation before the rest of it gets to the classroom. There are legislators in Lansing that are seeing that and saying, “Yep,” including the governor, that are saying, “Yep, we need to do something in that transportation space.” If you’re a district that is Republic, Michigan, that’s got a lot of driving to do, that they are maybe starting to get a similar amount of money into the classroom, that somebody in a smaller, contained district like a Negaunee would have, or something like that. They’re getting equal dollars going into the classroom, and aren’t counting the busing side of it. We’re a ways off, but I feel we’re in our best place from a school funding conversation. Better than we have been in, in quite some time.

David Haynes:

This will also help with the federal childcare money, to reduce child poverty, I’m assuming, and it helps school districts focus on challenges with food shortages, by families and child family poverty, right? These would all be things they could [crosstalk 00:19:33]

Don Wotruba:

Yes. All of the funding that’s come out of the feds this year really opens up that door. We know mental health for kids has become a big issue. They can spend the money in that space. Ideally, they’re looking for things, because this money won’t be here forever. It’s a three-year window. They don’t want to spend money on things that they have to continue paying four or five years from now, because they won’t have the funding. There is a lot of programs they can start, get put in place, figure out how to build money for later. Definitely, that nutrition space, pushing into creating programs on poverty. You can do a lot in two or three years on literacy, or math skills, that you couldn’t do without that additional funding. That would really help to bring up, again, those low achieving kids.

David Haynes:

My last question is I’ve been hearing a lot in the UP, and I’d be interested to hear whether it’s downstate, about the challenge of mental health services for young people, inpatient, but no place to go with your young person, high school or younger even, and they need inpatient mental health. The family needs help. The young person needs help. Any discussion in Lansing about this issue of inpatient mental health services for young people?

Don Wotruba:

Not much of one. David, I would say that problem exists ever. We’ve got family friends that have a struggle with that, with one of their children, and are unable to find inpatient care. They’ve been in Michigan. They’ve been in Wisconsin. They’ve been in Indiana. It is a struggle everywhere, not just in rural areas. We’re now even starting to see outpatient mental health in the school setting, becoming hard to find. There are just not enough mental health professionals to go around, even in the outpatient setting. Probably in a correlation, although I’m not a scientist to prove it, we also see teen suicide rates increasing. That often has to do with not being able to get the help that they need. I wish Lansing… They’ve started funding a little bit in the school aid act, and that space, not for inpatient, but for that school side of things. We just need to really bump that money up over the next handful of years, so that we can both hire and actually incent enough people to go into that field. Sometimes it’s a shortage of the professionals, more than it is anything else.

David Haynes:

Don, I want to thank you and our listeners. This has been really educational. It’s particularly wonderful to talk to somebody who grew up in a rural school district in the UP, and is now leading school policy in the state. Thank you for spending time with us. This has been really great, and I hope we can do it again soon.

Don Wotruba:

Absolutely. It was a pleasure. I love the UP. I love what you’re doing at Rural Insights. I try to get up there as much as I can to visit family, both my wife and mine. We keep crossing that bridge as long as it’s standing there.

David Haynes:

Well, I’m glad you pay in the toll. Thanks, Don. Appreciate it.

Don Wotruba:

You’re welcome.

David Haynes:

Good drive today.