Cass City Public Schools Superintendent Jeff Hartel, left, is shown at a Board of Education meeting earlier this year along with board members Craig Bellew, center, and Alice Zaleski. Cass City High School was tops in the county on a November “report card” issued by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy.
By Tom Gilchrist
Staff Writer
CASS CITY — Board of Education members here interviewed Emily Phillips and Joey Kreeger on Monday night, before voting 3-2 to appoint Phillips as a new board member to succeed Jeff Loomis who resigned his seat in November.
Phillips won’t have to run for election until November of 2016.
Board member Dan Manwell was absent from Monday’s special meeting when the board voted to pick one of the two applicants.
Craig Bellew, Alice Zaleski and Sloane Stimpfel voted to appoint Phillips. Janie Meeker and Dave Osentoski voted to appoint Kreeger.
“They were both good candidates,” said Cass City Public Schools Superintendent Jeff Hartel. “I really hope in 2016 — when we have four seats open — that Joey will come back and run again, because she will be a good board member.”
Loomis moved out of the Cass City school district to take a new job out of the area.
In other news, Cass City High School ranked highest in the Advertiser’s coverage area in a late November report card on public high schools issued by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy in Midland.
Cass City High ranked 36th in the state — among 659 public high schools — on the “2014 Michigan Public High School Context and Performance Report Card.” Cass City rated higher than any of the 12 public high schools in school districts with land in Tuscola County. Frankenmuth High was next highest at 98th on the report card, with Kingston ranking 102nd and Mayville ranking 137th.
Reese High ranked lowest in the county — 432nd — in the study, which professed to “provide an indication of whether a school, given its students’ socioeconomic background, has posted academic outcomes that are better or worse than expected.”
Akron-Fairgrove ranked 282nd, Caro ranked 291st, Marlette was 260th, Unionville-Sebewaing Area was 268th, Vassar ranked 298th, Owendale-Gagetown ranked 329th and Millington placed 429th on the high-school report cards.
The Mackinac Center for Public Policy stated it used “four years’ worth of Michigan Merit Exam and ACT test scores” that “were adjusted based on the percentage of students in a high school who qualified for a free lunch.” The study considered students’ socioeconomic backgrounds, “which research has shown has a large impact on student achievement,” the Center’s website stated.
The study averaged school-level outcomes across four years to provide a “more complete profile of a school’s performance,” according to the website.
Cass City Public Schools, as of the end of the last school fiscal year June 30, noted a fund balance, or savings, or $1,196,768, according to Hartel. That constitutes about 13 percent of the school district’s annual expenses, Hartel said. During the last school fiscal year, the district realized a savings of $283,000 that made the fund savings as high as it is, according to Hartel.
“It’s the most we’ve had here in quite a while,” Hartel said. “Our board has a goal to keep it anywhere between 7 and 10 percent, but we’re up to 13 percent, so we feel very good that we’re being fiscally sound at a time when our enrollment’s going down.
“Our kids are getting an ‘A’ like on the grade from the Mackinac Center, and doing well on the MEAP test, plus we’re saving money, so we’re very happy with the way things are going.”