Dearest reader, sometimes the breadcrumb you follow isn't the one that ends up catching your attention.
This morning I posted about receipts, proof, current board members and people running for a board seat. That led to a reader sending me some breadcrumbs involving comments made by Saginaw Township Community Schools board members surrounding a previous bond election.
I've actually had quite a few messages today from readers providing breadcrumbs of comments by their current board members. That will be a post for later...
But, I started doing what I do.
I went backward.
Meeting by meeting. Agenda by agenda. Minute by minute.
And somewhere along the way, I stopped researching the question I started with and found myself staring at another one.
The superintendent's contract.
Jamie Kraatz became superintendent of Saginaw Township Community Schools in 2023.
Then the ledger starts moving.
October 9, 2023
The Board approved Kraatz's superintendent employment agreement.
January 13, 2025
The Board extended her contract through June 30, 2028, along with a 2.5% salary increase effective July 1, 2025.
January 26, 2026
The Board extended the contract again.
This time:
June 30, 2029.
Keep that date in mind.
Because there is a school-board election in November 2026, and four of the seven Saginaw Township Community Schools Board seats are on the ballot.
I'm not going to speculate about who wins those seats. I don't really like politics.
Instead, let's make this entirely hypothetical.
Suppose voters elected four new board members.
Four members constitute a majority of a seven-member board.
That would mean a newly elected board majority could walk into office in January, and inherit a superintendent contract extending approximately 2½ more years, through June 2029, negotiated and extended by the board that preceded it.
That made me reach for the spectacles. Not because extending a superintendent's contract is inherently improper. It isn't.
Multi-year contracts can provide stability and continuity. Boards can have perfectly legitimate reasons for extending them.
But there's another side to that ledger.
A multi-year contract can also limit the flexibility of a future Board of Education.
If a future board decides it wants different leadership, what happens next can depend heavily upon what's actually written in that contract.
Termination provisions.
Cause.
Notice requirements.
Severance.
Buyout provisions.
Financial obligations to the district.
And that brought me to an even simpler question:
Where is the contract?
I can find where the Board voted on it.
I can find where the Board extended it.
I can find where the Board extended it again.
But I cannot find the current superintendent employment agreement published on the district's website.
And then I went looking for something else.
Where is the superintendent's evaluation?
Again, I can find references in the public meeting record to the superintendent evaluation process and Board action surrounding it.
But where can a taxpayer actually read the evaluation?
And that led me to the third question.
Where are the board packets?
Saginaw Township Community Schools maintains a public BoardBook meeting site containing agendas and minutes. I went through years of those records while building my Saginaw Township Community Schools ledger. The current public portal likewise presents meetings through public notices, agendas and minutes.
But the supporting packet that allows a resident to see the documents board members received when considering an item?
Where is it?
That's an important distinction.
Minutes tell us what a board did.
An agenda tells us what a board planned to discuss.
The supporting documents can tell taxpayers what information the board had when it made the decision.
And strangely enough, Saginaw Township Community Schools clearly understands the value of putting public financial documents online. Its website provides budgets and projections, and it maintains a separate collection of collective-bargaining agreements.
So I'm not alleging that Michigan law requires every one of these documents to be posted online.
That's not my question.
My question is much simpler:
Why aren't they?
If taxpayers can read the contracts negotiated with employee bargaining units, why shouldn't they also be able to easily read the contract governing the district's highest-ranking employee?
If the superintendent receives a favorable evaluation that supports another contract extension, why shouldn't the public be able to see the evaluation or, where legally permissible, the substance supporting that conclusion?
And if board members receive documents before voting on major financial and governance decisions, why shouldn't those public records be attached to the meeting materials whenever they can legally be disclosed?
Especially when one of those decisions can extend beyond the terms of some of the very board members making it.
That isn't an accusation against Jamie Kraatz.
It isn't a judgment about whether she is a good superintendent, a bad superintendent, or somewhere in between.
It's a governance question.
And it started because a reader handed me a completely different breadcrumb.
Funny how ledgers work that way.
You start looking for one receipt...
and notice three others are missing.
With receipts and respect.
#LadyBudgetdown #WithReceiptsAndRespect #SaginawTownshipCommunitySchools #SchoolTransparency #SaginawTownship