Review: TPS Financial Data 2015-2025
As promised, a ten-year review of Munetrix data
Hello everyone, Jake Willey here. I promised you my yearly “where are we now” analysis back in October, but the final numbers never came in. First, we had the government gridlock in Lansing delaying payments. Then, we had the $750k budget “blunder”. Now, apparently, Tecumseh schools budget review finds $1.2m in missing expenses. I thought we’d never know how much money the district was left with, but Munetrix has finally published the numbers. Of course, these final numbers may shift downward due to recent discoveries. You can read last year’s analysis in this article.
The Basics
In all charts below, the data has been pulled from the Munetrix website. You can verify this data, or pull your own data by using this link. I’ve included a screenshot straight from the Munitrix website below. Each year, we will review metrics over the past decade.
I downloaded this data into the Numbers app and ran a few charts of my own. Below, you will see our reported enrollment numbers over the course of a decade.
Now let’s look at revenue versus expenses. For a healthy district, the blue line should be above the orange line. We see revenues exceed expenditures until around 2018, then another brief period of growth during the COVID era due to an influx of COVID funds.
The chart below is the same data from revenue versus expenditures, but expressed as a ratio. The orange line (“1”) in the middle expresses revenue = expenditures. The blue line >1 represents positive growth, where growth is revenues exceeding expenditures, while <1 represents decline. We see the same increase in revenue from 2020 to 2021 due to COVID funds.
Now let’s take a look at another ratio I created: enrollment versus expenditures. This number shows the average amount of money the district spends each year for every student enrolled. We get it by taking the district’s total spending (on teachers, buses, buildings, supplies, administration—everything needed to run the schools) and dividing it by the total number of students. Think of this as the cost to educate including administration.
Finally, there’s the financial risk score. This score is calculated by Munetrix and I merely transposed it into a line graph. The higher the line, the higher the financial risk attributed to the district’s fiscal situation. The data point for 2025 does not take into account the recent discovery of missing or underestimated expenses.
When Elections Matter
Here’s our enrollment before and after the recall. The orange, vertical line represents the 2018 recall that ushered in the Timeline of Tumult in Tecumseh.
Below you will see the fund balance since 2015 overlayed with each current board member according to when they were last elected. We notice a sharp increase in fund balance (represented by the COVID icon) during the pandemic when additional funds were pumped into local districts. Aside from these funds, the decline is steady from 2018 until today with the end-of-year fund balance in question due to the problems detailed by Mr. Lenar these past few months.
It is important to note that unless a board member serves on the finance committee (such as Trustee Simpson), board members typically have less sway when it comes to matters of finance. This responsibility typically falls on the superintendent. Below is an summary of our last ten years of district leadership:
Kelly Coffin (Dr. Kelly Coffin): July 2013 until January 2019.
Griff Mills and Ryan Rhoades: March 25, 2019. Rhoades was placed on paid leave March 26, 2019, and resigned June 13, 2019.
Brad Hamilton: Hired as interim superintendent April 8, 2019; resigned May 8, 2019 (after about one month).
Greg Lewis: Hired as interim superintendent May 13, 2019 (described as the fifth in the 2019 cycle). He served until a permanent replacement was hired later that year.
Rick Hilderley (Richard W. Hilderley): Selected in October 2019 and announced retirement in August 2023, retiring June 2024, then “un-retiring” in 2025 to become superintendent of Colon Community Schools.
Matt Hilton: Selected as superintendent in March of 2024 (unanimous board vote). He was previously Executive Director of Elementary Education at Ann Arbor Public Schools (since July 2021).
Conclusion
While a ten-year history of finances does add important context, it cannot tell the whole story. All we can say for certain is that our fund balance and enrollment have been on the decline since 2018 as our financial risk score has increased. Every possible excuse has been made, but none have improved the situation.