If annexation is approved, a combined Ann Arbor and Whitmore Lake School district would become the 4th largest in the state.
Just over a month ago, the Ann Arbor and Whitmore Lake School Boards held a joint meeting to start talks about possible annexation. We'll likely know after a meeting Wednesday night at Ann Arbor's Pioneer High School if a plan will be put before voters this fall to move forward with combining the districts.
A small committee of school board members as well as financial and legal experts from Ann Arbor and Whitmore Lake have been studying the issues that will impact an annexation plan. These include tax, millage, staffing, and state funding issues. The committee will share the results of their study with both school boards.
Ann Arbor School Board Vice-President Christine Stead says then both boards can decide how they want to proceed, "There are options where both communities would have to vote on something, there's one path where one community would not have to vote on something. So I think we'll have a full discussion of that during the course of the meeting and at the end we will have each board vote on what they want to do."
To appear on the November ballot final language needs to be filed by August 12th.
Stead believes possible benefits of annexation include economies of scale and additional revenue for Ann Arbor schools, while Whitmore Lake could gain programming and sustainability.
Like 89.1 WEMU on Facebook and follow us on Twitter— Andrew Cluley is the Ann Arbor beat reporter, and anchor for 89.1 WEMU News. Contact him at 734.487.3363 or email him acluley@emich.edu.
