Lady Budgetdown - Oakland County
Dearest reader,
The spectacles have been traveling through Oakland County.
As part of The Business of Public Education series, I have been collecting one very specific receipt from every traditional public school district in the county:
District-paid association dues.
These are the public dollars districts report spending on memberships and associations for the district and its staff.
There is nothing inherently improper about paying association dues. Associations can provide training, professional development, advocacy, legal resources, networking, and other services.
But they are still public dollars.
And if I am going to start examining the private organizations surrounding Michigan's public education system, it seems only fair to first establish how much public money is flowing into them.
So I opened the Oakland County ledger.
There are 28 traditional public school districts in Oakland County. For 18 of them, I located usable FY2024-25 dollar disclosures.
Together, those 18 districts reported:
$835,434.57
in association dues and membership fees.
That is not an Oakland County total.
Huron Valley Schools published its FY2024-25 list of associations, but did not include the amounts paid.
Several other districts did not have a FY2024-25 disclosure I could locate. Some are displaying association-dues reports that are several years old. Hazel Park presents a different problem: its currently posted disclosure is for FY2025-26, while this ledger is specifically examining FY2024-25.
Those missing dollars will remain missing from my total. Because I am not going to estimate them. I am not going to substitute another fiscal year.
And I am not going to wander through check registers trying to manufacture a number that the district itself was supposed to disclose.
If the receipt isn't there, the hole stays visible.
The $835,434.57 is therefore not an estimate of what Oakland County districts spent.
It is simply what I can document from the 18 FY2024-25 disclosures containing dollar amounts.
And this is where the rabbit hole gets considerably more interesting.
Oakland is only one county.
I am building this ledger county by county because eventually we can turn it around and ask a different question:
How much public money is flowing statewide to each of these associations?
MASA. MASB. MSBO. MASSP. MAASE. And many, many others.
One district's membership may look rather ordinary.
Hundreds of districts together?
Well, dearest reader...
that is why one keeps a ledger.
Receipts first. Questions second.
More counties are coming.
#LadyBudgetdown #TheBusinessOfPublicEducation #OaklandCounty #MichiganSchools #SchoolFinance #PublicMoney #Transparency #FollowTheReceipts