At Issue
Funding problems force teacher and family to alter course
Kalamazoo holds ‘Promise’ for librarian who left a small town she loved to seek better educational opportunities for her children.
When
Laura Warren-Gross received
a pink slip last spring, she was
forced to make a life-altering decision—leave the Reed City school district
and
find a job in a district with a more stable
funding base.
Her decision didn’t come easily.
“We really liked small-town life…we were homeowners there and a part of the community, but I was concerned for the future of my children’s education due to difficult funding decisions that were being made in Reed City,” Warren-Gross said.
She was one of 16 teachers who received pink slips along with most of the Reed City support staff. “After seeing some of the cuts, I wondered if budget problems would reach a point where the district would decide it couldn’t afford a librarian any longer,” she said.
At the same time, most of the honors classes in the high school were eliminated even though students and parents wanted the courses kept.
Warren-Gross saw her son’s first-grade class size balloon to 28 students and the funding for the preschool program her daughter attended eliminated because of budget problems.
“State aid funding does not favor small districts with shrinking enrollments,” she said. “I began looking for a district with more stable funding that would be a good fit for my children.”
That district was Kalamazoo, where Warren-Gross landed a job this school year as librarian at the Maple Street Magnet School for the Arts. A major selling point for Warren-Gross to join the district was the Kalamazoo Promise, a one-of-a-kind college scholarship program funded by an anonymous donor.
The Promise will provide graduates of Kalamazoo Public Schools with up to 100 percent of their tuition and mandatory fees for four years at public universities and community colleges in Michigan.
Warren-Gross, her husband and their three young children are comfortably adjusting to a much larger urban city that is home to Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo College and Kalamazoo Valley Community College.
“We’re getting a good feel for the town, the culture, and the education possibilities,” Warren-Gross said at the start of the school year. “We’ve joined the ‘Y,’ begun searching for a new church, and my husband is a Cub Scout pack leader.”
“It was difficult leaving Reed City, but this was a meant-to-be move for us.” Kalamazoo EA member Laura Warren-Gross, with husband Jay and children Noah, 7, Natalie, and Molly, likes the educational promise offered by her new district.