Patricia Green's resignation letter to Ann Arbor board stresses zero-based budgeting
Superintendent Patricia Green addresses the class of 2012 during a commencement ceremony at the Convocation Center at Eastern Michigan University on June 7, 2012.
Melanie Maxwell I AnnArbor.com file photo
She gave no reason, other than plans to retire, for stepping down at this time.
The superintendent submitted her letter of resignation to board President Deb Mexicotte early Thursday morning at the end of the board's regular meeting. AAPS officials announced Green's departure to the public in an email at about 5 p.m. Thursday. Both Green and Mexicotte issued a statement to the community.
Green's statement to the public said she will be retiring after 43 years in public education and indicated she plans to spend her retirement traveling, reconnecting with friends and family, whom she has neglected, and doing some reflective writing about her experiences in education.
Ann Arbor Superintendent Resigns
Neither the formal resignation letter, which was obtained by AnnArbor.com, nor Green's statement to the community, elaborates on her decision to retire. Attempts to contact Green Thursday and Friday for an interview have been unsuccessful.
Last fall, Green, members of her executive cabinet and the finance department began moving the district away from a method of budgeting called "bottom-line accountability" toward "line-by-line accountability" — the first step in zero-based budgeting. In an interview with AnnArbor.com in early March, Green said the district is in the process of changing all its budget documents and tools to account for each expenditure under every department and building budget.
She explained zero-based budgeting forces officials to identify and prioritize school programs and expenditures. Then each year, the line item starts at zero and "gets funded to the target," Green said. She added it is like turning the budget process on its head — justifying expenditures rather than debating what to cut.
Green wrote in her resignation letter dated April 10 that zero-based budgeting is "absolutely essential to the future of the district." She also stated she is "certain" Chief Financial Officer Nancy Hoover will be able to "lead the charge" on this initiative.
Green appointed Hoover, director of finance, to the CFO position in late February, giving her additional responsibilities, after Deputy Superintendent for Operations Robert Allen resigned to take a job in North Carolina. Green decided not to refill Allen's position and said she wanted to review how the district is organized. It is unclear how Green's resignation will impact her preliminary plans to restructure the district's central administration.
Green, whose salary is $245,000, signed a five-year contract when she came to the district in July 2011 from North Allegheny School District in Pennsylvania, where she had served as superintendent since 2002. Prior to working in Pennsylvania, Green worked for Prince George's County Public Schools in Maryland. She and her husband still have a home in Maryland, where her husband lives and owns an orthodontics and periodontics practice.
Read Green's formal letter of resignation to the board:
Dear President Mexicotte:
Please accept my resignation as Superintendent of Schools of the Ann Arbor Public Schools, effective 90 days from today. I plan to retire at that time after 43 years as a professional educator in public education. I have thoroughly enjoyed my entire career and I thank you and the Board for the opportunity to serve this community.
I urge the Board to follow up on my assessment that the District must move from bottom line accountability to line by line accountability and to fully implement the template developed under my leadership to utilize zero based budgeting (ZBB). Currently, we have put in place the action steps to continue to implement line by line accountability, which have been underway since October 2012, and I am certain that our Chief Financial Officer will lead the charge to migrate fully to ZBB. I believe this is absolutely essential to the future of the District.
Sincerely,
Patricia P. Green, Ph.D.
Superintendent of Schools
Ann Arbor Public Schools
Danielle Arndt covers K-12 education for AnnArbor.com. Follow her on Twitter @DanielleArndt or email her at daniellearndt@annarbor.com.
Comments
KateT
Fri, Apr 19, 2013 : 3:33 a.m.
How invested could she have been when her husband lives in Maryland?
concernedmom
Sun, Apr 14, 2013 : 2:04 p.m.
How can budget and spending transparency and line by line expenditure accountability be a bad thing? I seem to recall that it was a lack of public confidence in the way AAPS was spending money that caused a major education millage to be voted down under Dr. Roberts. He left shortly after that. It seems that the people who were unhappy about how money was being spent would be happy that someone tried to explain and justify every single expenditure at a time that the budget is in such bad shape. I personally really admired Dr. Green and felt she put the kids and the families of this community first and did the best she could with limited budget resources. I am sorry she is leaving.
Steve Bean
Sun, Apr 14, 2013 : 2:29 p.m.
concernedmom, I appreciate your clear-mindedness.
InterestedReader
Sat, Apr 13, 2013 : 2:40 p.m.
Danielle- In most industries you are expected to box up your office and leave the premises when you resign, even when giving notice. They do not want someone who is not invested in the business to be making decisions. Will Dr. Green be in Balas until the end of her notice or has she already boxed up her dolls and vacated the premises? With the current situation of having to cut the budget and decide which programs will be affected someone who has already mentally checked out should not be part of the planning.
Steve Bean
Sun, Apr 14, 2013 : 2:31 p.m.
This is not an industry, or so we might do well to demonstrate.
David Cahill
Sat, Apr 13, 2013 : 1:50 p.m.
Green's views are a perfect "negative barometer". If she wants zero-based budgeting, it's a bad idea.
A Voice of Reason
Sat, Apr 13, 2013 : 4:58 p.m.
How do you know it is a bad idea?
walker101
Sat, Apr 13, 2013 : 12:25 p.m.
Too bad our President couldn't take the same action, maybe he would save us from eventually hitting the $20 trillion mark.
Liberty Soule
Sat, Apr 13, 2013 : 11:50 a.m.
Hopefully, this time they'll hire the guy from Iowa, like they should have last time. Patricia Green was a bad hire.
Carole
Sat, Apr 13, 2013 : 10:50 a.m.
Line item budget would be most helpful in tracking exactly how funds are being expended. All departments should be totally responsible for keeping a detailed budget that should be submitted for audit every three months. Justification for expenditures is extremely important and I don't believe that that has been occurring in any public funded group, i.e. schools, city, county, etc.
A Voice of Reason
Sat, Apr 13, 2013 : 9:05 a.m.
Line by line accountability to utilize zero based budgeting. Her last words and means there is something fishy going on that she was seeing in the school district. Why would they not go to this method--because the truth will be uncovered.
Stephen Lange Ranzini
Sat, Apr 13, 2013 : 3:22 a.m.
When the proposed change in the budgeting process was first discussed publicly, I made the following comment, which is even more important in light of Dr. Green's resignation letter: "The district, led by [Finance Director Nancy] Hoover and the finance department, is in the process of changing all of its budget documents and tools to account for every expenditure under each department and building budget. Every line item in the future also will have a detailed description of how the money is being spent and on what." "Green said most school districts use a method of budgeting called bottom-line accountability. She said the Ann Arbor Public Schools is in the process of moving away from this method to line-by-line accountability..." Translation: the current budget documents are for show and sit on the shelf collecting dust after approval by the AAPS BoE and are quite useless. It will take us a year to create detailed budgets that we can actually use to track expenditures at the level of detail required to actually know what we are spending the money on and to know how much each school actually costs to run and to catch waste. See: www.annarbor.com/news/education/ann-arbor-superintendent-school-closures-not-realistic-for-next-year-goal-is-keeping-cuts-out-of-cla/?cmpid=RSS_link_education
walker101
Sat, Apr 13, 2013 : 12:30 p.m.
Stephen, by them changing the budgeting process it was intended to prolong the inevitable, the district will like hundreds of others will go bankrupt, anything they can do to prolong this from happening is just stalling the outcome, simple economics.
Bear
Sat, Apr 13, 2013 : 5:11 a.m.
Your comment, belboz, is a perfect example of that statement. I believe Mr. Ranzini's statement to be informative. If you wish to take action, you must first have reliable and pertinent information to base your actions upon. Trite comments such as your own do nothing to aid that process.
belboz
Sat, Apr 13, 2013 : 3:43 a.m.
Comments are not important. Actions are.
Pablo
Sat, Apr 13, 2013 : 1:14 a.m.
"Green's statement to the public said she will be retiring after 43 years in public education and indicated she plans to spend her retirement traveling, reconnecting with friends and family, whom she has neglected, and doing some reflective writing about her experiences in education." In other words, either she came here clueless as to what she wanted to do with her career (to do when she grew up!), or as a trial-job as she sought out her future. What a shame that she is in such a quandary and how we suffer(ed) for that ambiguity.
aaparent
Sat, Apr 13, 2013 : midnight
@ A2parent- I can think of a few reasons that BOE is not angry. --They wanted her to leave and these 2 letters released to the public were awhile in the works. Green's resignation letter could almost sound like an SNL skit, "..yeah, retirement, that's the ticket.." --Read the other stories posted today. The comments or quotes from the BOE members sound like they are not making a scrap book of happy memories of the past 2 years --Green didn't seem like a good fit for the job after the first few weeks. Read Brit Satchwell's comments about the salary being set in advance and polarizing her as a leader before she arrived --Green didn't seem to like being out in public much or like she wanted to unpack, get comfortable and plant roots. That is not going to fly in Ann Arbor The BOE botched this from start to finish, most of all Mexicotte and maybe Nelson & Stead, too. The 3 of them seemed to be hypnotized by Green's platitudes and visions for a district she didn't take the time to get to know in any genuine way. Robert Allen leaving was a bad sign. I think a minority of board members try to voice views and opinions that reflect a larger number of parents, teachers and students in the AAPS community. This BOE seems pretty disconnected from the day-to-day realities of what is happening on the front lines in many school buildings for kids at all levels. Any trustee who tries to speak about that gets shut down usually by Mexicotte or Nelson. It is the voters who should be mad at the BOE, not the BOE who should be mad at Green. The BOE caused this mess. They should step up and take responsibility for their mistake. Instead, Mexicotte posts a carefully crafted letter that reads like something Green can pin to her raincoat as she uses the district credit card to pay the moving trucks.
concernedmom
Mon, Apr 15, 2013 : 9:54 a.m.
Funny, I don't remember seeing Todd Roberts out in public much either especially after the last millage failed. What I do remember about Pat Green is that she showed up at a meeting for special ed kids on a Tuesday evening in October and spent more than 2 hours talking to and listening to parents who had some very grave concerns for their kids. I was one of them and I cannot say how reassuring it was to have her there. She followed through on further meetings and training for teachers. She has also personally responded to my emails. She found the time when others (including teachers) did not. I just wish she would stay to complete the job she started - we need total accountability and justification in budget spending. Can't think of anyone who would want that job expecially with the union pushing back all the time.
snapshot
Sat, Apr 13, 2013 : 4:39 p.m.
Well said but board members were still voted into office so people who want change have to get more voter turnout.
Carole
Fri, Apr 12, 2013 : 10:26 p.m.
Agree with Great Lakes Lady -- how much will she receive with her departure. In my opinion, she did not fulfill her five-year contract, and therefore should not have any sort of pay out. And, no retirement/benefits for only 2 years worth of work.
a2mom
Fri, Apr 12, 2013 : 9:37 p.m.
I don't understand why the BOE isn't angry.
jns131
Sun, Apr 14, 2013 : 3:05 p.m.
They aren't. They are probably doing a tap dance right about now glad they got rid of her and glad they are not on the hot seat for paying a salary of some amount that is just not right. Ended up costing a lot of jobs because of her. Good riddance.Maybe they can go after Balas next?
snapshot
Sat, Apr 13, 2013 : 4:36 p.m.
I think replacement candidates worth their salt will aready be alarmed. It may give candidates a chance to redirect this board's expectations. I'd like to see public interviews with candidates.
Steve Bean
Sat, Apr 13, 2013 : 1:19 p.m.
You're assuming that they're not. (And I'm assuming that you haven't asked every one of them.) Feeling angry and expressing are two different things. I'm glad they're not expressing it, because doing so has no value and would only serve to alarm potential replacement candidates.
hail2thevictoria
Fri, Apr 12, 2013 : 9:12 p.m.
What are we going to do now? Who is up next?
Macabre Sunset
Fri, Apr 12, 2013 : 8:55 p.m.
I couldn't help but notice in the weekly school email, which discusses the budget problems, there's the usual whining about the $17 million shortfall being due to state government decisions. I don't have any hope for this district, because passing the buck seems entrenched in the culture. No one took any responsibility. Not Green. Not anyone.
snapshot
Sat, Apr 13, 2013 : 9:12 p.m.
Hail, why is there always a "but" when it comes to admitting responsibility for people who refuse to take responsiblility?
hail2thevictoria
Fri, Apr 12, 2013 : 9:10 p.m.
Taking responsibility is fine but I want to see results more than I want to hear the words "It's all my fault". Don't you?
Claude Kershner
Fri, Apr 12, 2013 : 8:22 p.m.
When the Superintendent of schools resigns just a short time after the CFO resigns we as a community need to do some serious reflecting on the people we put on the school board. Regardless of Dr. Green's perceived blunders in office she came here because she was asked to come. It is not her fault that the salary offered was high. Who amoung us wouldn't take a pay raise for a job in an area of work we love? The fact is a zero based budget is VERY scary to stakeholders who have been given free access to a pot of budget dollars minus oversight or justification. All of Dr. Green's miscues aside the direction she was leading the district towards financial accountability was correct. Shame on some of the board members for putting their time and energy into non-board related activities (football brawl court proceedings) but not being available for ANY community discussion groups about the budget.
snapshot
Sat, Apr 13, 2013 : 4:33 p.m.
Well said Claude. And as far as attending board meetings Philly, they are packed with supporters and "accountability and fiscal restraint" are not complex. They only entail living within one's means and doing what's best for the children rather than the unions and employees. Getting more revenue into the classroom and out the union.
PhillyCheeseSteak
Fri, Apr 12, 2013 : 8:46 p.m.
Mr. Kershner, Community Dialogue Meetings on the AAPS Budget April 16, Tuesday, 11:30 am – 1:30 pm, Downtown Ann Arbor Public Library – 4th Floor Conference Room (A). Board members expected to attend: Irene Patalan, Glenn Nelson, Deb Mexicotte April 20, Saturday, 9-11 am, Scarlett Middle School, Media Center Board members expected to attend: Susan Baskett, Glenn Nelson, Deb Mexicotte Also there were 2 additional meetings already held.
Momma G
Fri, Apr 12, 2013 : 7:55 p.m.
I certainly hope she doesn't expect a severance pay since she broke the 5 yr. contract. She should also forfeit what she paid into the retirement system and what the district paid into it. As far as CFO Nancy Hoover goes, she could be supt. She is a wonderful, competent person and I have the greatest respect for her. I have to agree the "line-by-line" accountability is a good one and Nancy will definitely make sure that works well.
PittsfieldPerson
Fri, Apr 12, 2013 : 11:32 p.m.
All public school employees pay into the state retirement system (MPSERS). The rules are set by the state. The state will refund her contribution on request. There is no refund of what AAPS paid. Some states have reciprocal agreements though where the years of service and contributions can be transferred to the other state pension funds. She may be able to arrange this, however, it's up to Michigan, not AAPS.
JRW
Fri, Apr 12, 2013 : 7:50 p.m.
"Attempts to contact Green Thursday and Friday for an interview have been unsuccessful." Needless to say, Green doesn't want to reveal her real reason for "retiring." We can only speculate, unfortunately. She still has 3 months to go, so she likely has decided to play out the remaining time in a neutral way, rather than be more forthcoming about the real reasons. If it's a health issue, then she should maintain confidentiality. But if it's an issue related to her job, then she owes the district a more specific explanation. Nothing will change for the better if supers just keep the revolving door spinning.
Chester Drawers
Sun, Apr 14, 2013 : 5:43 p.m.
The word is 'rubbish,' and for about the hundredth time, she will not be receiving pension from the Michigan public school employees system.
jns131
Sun, Apr 14, 2013 : 3:04 p.m.
This also goes hand in hand with what happened last winter. Remember? Every single school district closed and Ann Arbor stayed open? Where was Green? In Maryland. Letting her flunkies do the work of keeping schools open and making it a hazard for everyone else to get these children to school. Good riddance to bad rubbage.
snapshot
Sat, Apr 13, 2013 : 4:27 p.m.
I see it differently JRW........Green owes nothing to anyone and resignation is her own business. What I propose is that "the district" evaluate their own performance and expectations relating to her resignation. If there was disharmony and disagreement then everyone remaining knows what it entailed. I think it's pretty obvious that Green wanterd accountability and fiscal responsibility implemented "as policy". The "board" does not. The board just figures it cancontinue to burden the taxpayers (property owners" with milages to compensate for poor fiscal decisions and incompetent management. After all, hiding inadequacies has become standard procedure in government leadership.
jcj
Fri, Apr 12, 2013 : 7:23 p.m.
She can take her recommendations to Maryland. Or her next job.
Steve Bean
Sat, Apr 13, 2013 : 1:12 p.m.
So out of spite, you'd rather not get what we paid for? That's just silly (and that's a generous term).
Bear
Sat, Apr 13, 2013 : 5:01 a.m.
what part about 'retirement' didn't you catch?
alarictoo
Fri, Apr 12, 2013 : 7:22 p.m.
If you go back to the recent article that annarbor.com ran it shows that, as is normal under Michigan state law, money is being paid into the retirement system for her. However, because she does not have the requisite 10 years to be vested in the pension program she will not receive a pension. She should be reimbursed for the amount that was taken from her pay to be put in the pension, I am not certain if she will receive the portion that the district had to pay, however.
JRW
Fri, Apr 12, 2013 : 7:52 p.m.
She will be able to withdraw the funds from the retirement system that were paid in, as long as she is over 59 1/2. It won't be a pension, but a refund of what was taken out of her checks. I doubt she will get what the district contributed, rather only her contributions. Not sure what the AAPS policy is on that.
noreaster
Fri, Apr 12, 2013 : 7:21 p.m.
I can think of 8 or 9 million reasons why Dr. Green retired. Each one represents a one dollar failure of previous staff and the board in dealing with AAPS administration and the budget. Hopefully the change to zero-based budgeting will make folks realize what things actually cost so honest cost-benefit decisions can be made.
Great Lakes Lady
Fri, Apr 12, 2013 : 7:13 p.m.
Does she receive a severance lump sum? Will she collect retirement and benefits from AAPS?
jns131
Sun, Apr 14, 2013 : 3:02 p.m.
She will get a state pension because she was a member of the AAPS community. Whatever is in her contract she will get. As for her resignation? No surprise there and huge sigh of relief from a lot of teachers and administrators.
Danielle Arndt
Sat, Apr 13, 2013 : 3:49 a.m.
Great Lakes Lady, no, Patricia Green will not receive any sort of retirement package or lump sum from AAPS, nor is she eligible for a pension from the state. There also is no penalty for Green ending her five-year contract early (for those readers who asked this question yesterday). Thanks!
Jack Gladney
Fri, Apr 12, 2013 : 8:56 p.m.
Her contract is readily available for the public to read on annarbor.com. The terms of it a pretty straight forward with no complicated language...
A2since74
Fri, Apr 12, 2013 : 8:45 p.m.
Well, you can bet she will not have suffered financially whatever the arrangements for her hiring were. Ann Arbor is very generous to professionals who stop in for a few years on their way somewhere else.
olddog
Fri, Apr 12, 2013 : 7:17 p.m.
no one seems willing to answer this question. It was asked and not answered yesterday.