School Board Candidate David Zimmer

David Zimmer

Family

Married to Susan for 24 years with two children both educated in Saline Area Schools: Rob, Class of 2011 and Allison, Class of 2013.

Education

Michigan State University (B.A.) Dual major in Labor Relations and Organizational and Industrial Psychology.

Employment

Principal Consultant - Human Capital Partners

Community Involvement

• Member of the 2004 Long Range Planning Committee.
• Activist for retaining the foreign language program at Saline Middle School in 2006.
• Active in the development of the Pay to Participate Committee of 2008.
• Member of the 2009 Activity and Club Fee Committee.
• Led the effort for the development and eventual adoption of the weighted grades policy for Advanced Placement Classes at Saline High in 2010.
• 20 years of experience in senior management and executive level roles with a focus on turnarounds and rapidly expanding businesses.
• 11 years of human capital consulting experience with a focus on strategic initiatives for higher education, non-profit organizations, and human resources organizations.
• Helped to build programs for the children of Southeastern Michigan which create early learning literacy capability for urban and economically disadvantaged children.
• Helped to redesign the Admissions, Scholarship, and Financial Aid Programs at the University of Michigan Dearborn Campus which included the creation of a special scholarship program for students from economically disadvantaged communities.
• Has also been active in the Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts of America, the Saline High School Touchdown Club, the Saline Lacrosse Program, the Saline High School Dance Team, the Girl Scouts of America, and the PTO programs at Pleasant Ridge, Harvest, Heritage, Saline Middle School and Saline High School for over 12 years.

Why are you running?

I was involved in the creation of the Long Planning Committee concept beginning in 2003 and have worked tirelessly since that time to see this roadmap become a reality. Unfortunately, our actions taken are not as the long range planning effort envisioned.

Today our financial position is unsustainable, our classroom student size is unacceptable, and for the first time in my memory we are beginning to see evidence of a decline in our academic performance.

I remain committed to the objectives of the Long Range Planning Committee. I believe a balanced approach of academic excellence, fiscal excellence, commitment to our community and ensuring a positive and constructive work environment for our teachers, staff and administrators of the district is still within our reach.

What are the top 3 issues facing the district and how should the district address them?

The number one issue we face is financial stability. We must reset the financial model of the district. We must address the structural deficits that have been part of our operating plan since 2003. Our continuous practice of using our savings to fund expected operating expenses is now not an option. This has occurred even though our funding from the state has been the same or more for every year since 2003. As a case in point, Saline has received $400,000 more in funding from the state than last year, but we had to take money from our reserve to meet our short term operational needs.

The second issue we face is unacceptable class sizes in our district. We now have classes that are greater than 40 in our high school, more than 37 in our middle school and greater than 30 in fifth grade classes. This is unacceptable for the academic success of our students and the professional success of our many talented educators.

The third issue we face as a district has been the elimination of many essential support services and programs that has made Saline Schools a special and unique community. For example, we have reduced our paraprofessionals, literacy specialists, media center specialists to unacceptable levels.

What needs to happen with the next teachers' contract and how do you plan to get it done?

Actually the administrators, support staff as well as our teachers contracts are up for renewal next year. This creates an opportunity for us to systemically address the structural deficit we face as a school district. As part of the systemic assessment, we must address our broken operating model that we have as a district.

This broken model is the result of a decade long short term fix approach toward managing our financial obligations, without stepping back from the daily routine and looking at the longer term needs of our district.

We need to focus on our core charter of providing a high quality education for our young people, financial stability, and ensuring our educators have the tools they need to do their job. We need to build our budget from that point of view. This also requires us to focus on the short term and long term needs at the same time. For far too long, we have sacrificed our long term objectives for short term and the self created “crisis” in our annual operating plan.

(This page will be updated as we publish the candidate's answers to the questions we posed.)