Mike Conlin Archives - Public Response

Red Cedar Elementary School Programming

September 6, 2019

ELPS recently distributed a survey about programming in Red Cedar school. I don’t know if the survey was designed to forecast enrollment for different types of programming but it has resulted in many parents getting wound up. Below is a Public Response post I wrote on April 29, 2017 discussing Red Cedar programming if the $93M bond passed. I believe the numbers have changed only slightly in the past two years.

Mike Conlin

April 29, 2017 PUBLIC RESPONSE POST

Punchline: If the bond passes, … Read more →

ELPS Bussing Costs // Mike Conlin

January 8, 2019

EAST LANSING PUBLIC SCHOOL’S BUSSING COSTS

The recent controversy about the transition plans associated with ELPS implementing their elementary school reconfiguration made me curious about ELPS’s bussing costs.

I was shocked to find that ELPS spent $1,171,207 on student transportation in academic year 2017-18. The graph below shows that this is a 61% ($443,478) increase in ELPS’s student transportation costs over the past eleven years. Note that contracting out ELPD’s general education bussing to Dean Transportation, through the Ingham Intermediate School District (ISD), beginning … Read more →

Let’s stop playing checkers and start playing chess // Mike Conlin

November 29, 2018

Many parents with children in East Lansing Public Schools (ELPS) have been in an uproar the past couple of days over the crazy transition plans the school board proposed.

As ELPS begins to implement their elementary school reconfiguration, it is clear that no one has done any credible analysis of: (i) how the elementary school catchment areas should be drawn; (ii) how the school of choice decisions should vary across schools and grades; (iii) how permeable boundary requests affect these decisions; and (iv) what … Read more →