Dearest reader,
Lady B was not planning to spend her Sunday morning in Kalamazoo.
Then a message arrived.
A Kalamazoo Public Schools support employee reached out to Lady B and shared the district's wage schedules from bargaining.
And one number kept appearing.
2.29%.
Office and library assistants: 2.29%.
Montessori teaching assistants: 2.29%.
Campus safety officers: 2.29%.
According to the KPS support employee who contacted Lady B, that wasn't simply the first number placed on the bargaining table.
She told Lady B that 2.29% was what KPS gave support staff during bargaining and that, according to the KPS attorney involved in bargaining, the district would not offer them anything more.
Lady B wants to be very precise here.
The wage schedules themselves document the 2.29% increase. The statement about what occurred at the bargaining table comes directly from the KPS employee who contacted Lady B. Lady B has not independently obtained the bargaining records necessary to verify what the attorney said.
But that message made Lady B curious.
So she opened another ledger.
And suddenly 2.29% became a much more interesting number.
According to Kalamazoo Public Schools' own employee compensation reports, Superintendent Darrin Slade's reported base salary went from $243,106.68 in 2024 to $272,640.55 in 2025.
That's a year-over-year increase of 12.15%.
And Slade wasn't the only administrator whose reported base salary increased by more than 2.29%.
Lady B found the following year-over-year changes in the district's compensation reports:
📌 Superintendent: +12.15%
📌 Multilingual/World Languages Coordinator: +7.47%
📌 High School Principal: +5.91%
📌 Assistant Superintendent — Elementary: +5.80%
📌 Assistant Superintendent — Secondary: +5.71%
📌 Secondary Special Education Coordinator: +5.10%
📌 Director of Safety & Security: +5.07%
Meanwhile, the support-staff schedules Lady B received?
2.29%.
There is an important piece of fine print here.
A year-to-year change in reported base salary does not automatically mean each administrator received an across-the-board contractual raise of that percentage. Changes in position, assignment or other circumstances can affect the numbers.
Lady B isn't going to call something a contractual raise unless the receipts establish that.
What she can do is show you what KPS reported from one year to the next.
But then there is another number.
$31,000.
Slade's 2025 compensation included a separate $31,000 retention payment.
And this is where the numbers become particularly striking.
A Montessori teaching assistant at Step 1 earns $23,207 annually.
At Step 13 — the highest step on the schedule — annual base pay is $28,122.
That means Slade's $31,000 retention payment alone was $2,878 MORE than the entire annual base pay of a Montessori teaching assistant at the highest step.
Not his $272,640.55 base salary.
Not his total compensation.
One retention payment.
So Lady B kept digging.
Because if support employees were being told there wasn't more to offer, what did the district's financial position look like?
KPS began fiscal year 2024–25 with a General Fund balance of $40,501,039.
It ended the year with $42,699,823.
Read that again.
The district did not spend down its General Fund balance during that year.
It added approximately $2.2 million.
And according to KPS's 2026–27 preliminary budget, the district begins with approximately $42.39 million in unassigned General Fund balance and projects approximately $42.41 million remaining at year-end.
In other words, the preliminary budget essentially preserves roughly $42 million.
Now, Lady B is not suggesting that KPS should empty its General Fund balance to fund recurring employee salaries.
That would be an entirely different conversation, and recurring wages require recurring revenue.
But the entire ledger still matters when employees are sitting at a bargaining table discussing what a district can afford.
So Lady B is left with a question.
If Kalamazoo Public Schools could preserve a General Fund balance of roughly $42 million, report substantially larger year-over-year base-salary increases for a number of administrators, and provide its superintendent a $31,000 retention payment that exceeded an entire year's base pay for its highest-step Montessori teaching assistants...
Why was 2.29% the number offered to some of the district's lowest-paid support employees?
And if the account Lady B received from the KPS support employee is accurate, why was there allegedly nothing more the district was willing to offer them?
2.29% for support staff.
5%, 7% and even 12.15% year-over-year increases appearing elsewhere in the district's reported administrative base salaries.
A $31,000 superintendent retention payment.
Approximately $42 million preserved in the General Fund.
Lady B isn't going to tell you what conclusion to reach.
She's simply putting the numbers next to one another.
Because sometimes the ledger asks the question all by itself.
With receipts and respect. ❤️
Kalamazoo Public Schools
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