Roseville Community Schools
A Comedy of Errors
peter hedemark rebecca vasil
Nepotism, favortism, cronyism.Everything on this site is my opinion based on research I performed for a graduate level course in education at Wayne State University.
Thesis: Roseville officials aren't running a school district. They ARE running an employment service for friends and family
Roseville pays more for their school janitors than many other school districts including but not limited to Grosse Pointe and Birmingham where the residents earn twice as much money and nepotism is the cause. Too many Roseville School Board members are blood relatives and in-laws to the school janitors so they look out for their relatives before they look out for our kids and tax dollars.
The Macomb Daily reported that half of the failing schools in Macomb County were located in Roseville. In spite of having poor MME, MEAP and ACT test scores the Roseville School Board allowed Superintendent John Kment to work a part-time job at Metro Beach. At a salary of about $191,000 per year, which is more than the Warren Consolidated Superintendent earns where the district is much larger and the test scores are much higher. It is my understanding John Kment's wife retired from Roseville Schools as a secretary and receives a pension and then was re-hired to be Bob Eineicher's assistant to administer the Roseville Schools Bond money. So, she receives a pension check and a pay check from the district. Less than 5% of Americans earn $100,000 or more per year. I think our kids deserve the undivided attention of our Superintendent and he should not be working a part-time job at Metro Beach. But for some reason, Roseville parents don't seem to mind. I think if fans discovered the head coach of the Detroit Lions was working a part-time job at Metro Beach, and they had a crappy record like Roseville does, the fans would riot. However, in Roseville this situation hardly gets a yawn.
Our current School Board and Administrators laid off our Director of Special Education, Dr. Dennis Frendo and classroom aids because of a “budget crisis” but had plenty of money to hire the son of School Board member Theresa Genest as an Audio Visual Technician. The Roseville School Board voted to cut resources and entire programs for Roseville kids but had plenty of money to give board member Bob Eineicher an $85,000 job working for the district. But for some reason, Roseville parents did nothing. I am not sure why Roseville parents do nothing. I suspect many of them do not know, do not care are too busying trying to make a living. My intention here is to connect the dots and parents and tax payers know what is going on. If they do nothing, at least I can say that I did.
In May 2009 there was a School Board Election in Roseville. Only 10% of the voters voted and all the incumbents won AGAIN. About 2 weeks AFTER the election and again, as predicted, Roseville cut educational resources and teaching staff while the janitors, many of which are relatives to school board members kept their jobs and took no concessions. Roseville pays more for their janitors than Grosse Pointe, Birmingham and Saint Clair Shores. Again, about 10% of voters actually voted and they decided for the other 90%. This speaks volumes about Roseville parents.
Follow The Money
If you are a new school administrator or school board memeber and what good ideas on how to sucessfully run a school district, just look at the Roseville model and then do the opposte. A disgusted Roseville staff member sent me this memo dated May 27 (just two weeks AFTER the election) and presented to me as an actual memo from Roseville Schools. Please note all the educational resources which where were cut. Administrators and janitors did not take cuts. This is an example of the dirty tricks the school board uses. Roseville parents did nothing. Meanwhile, The Macomb Daily ran this story describing how Lakeview Schools is expanding educational resources, has increased enrollment and cites outsourcing janitorial services as one of the major reasons for the money to improve the programs for students. Lakeshore did the OPPOSITE of what Roseville did. With the money Lakeshore saved by outsourcing, they hired Roseville's old Director of Special Education, Dr. Dennis Frendo who had been laid off due to budget cuts.
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Again, Roseville pays more for their school custodians/janitors than several other districts in the area including but not limited to: Grosse Pointe, Saint Clair Shores, Birmingham.
Roseville Community Schools does not exist to provide high-paying jobs for custodians and maintenance workers who in many cases, are relatives to School Board members like Joe Steenland and Bob Eineicher and don't live in Roseville much less send their kids to Roseville schools. These Janitors often live in better areas than Roseville where the MEAP and SAT scores are much higher. According to the Roseville Employee Directory some of the Jamitors live in Sterling Heights, Utica and Harrison Township where the school scores are much better than Roseville.
Saint Clair Shores, Southfield, Birmingham, Huron Valley and Westland School districts have eliminated custodial positions in favor of contracting that work out to local companies. These districts are each saving millions of taxpayer's dollars. Saint Clair Shores, Grosse Pointe, Birmingham and Huron Valley and Westland are all paying less for janitors than Roseville parents and enjoy higher MEAP scores. Let me repeat that. Roseville taxpayers pay more for their school janitors than Grosse Pointe and Birmingham. Please click here to see a related article from the Michigan Education Report. Also, click here to see the article which goes on to say contracting out custodial work is up more than 26 percent and 90 percent of school districts are happy with the results.
Grosse Pointe Public Schools recently allowed their janitors to keep their jobs instead of outsourcing the work to a private company. However, the janitors had to accept $400,000.00 in concessions to keep their jobs. Click here to see the article from the Grosse Pointe News. The union politics going on behind the scenes has a profound impact on the educational process. Grosse Pointers are more highly educated, earn more and are less likely to belong to a union. The parents and school board members in Grosse Pointe put the futures of the kids ahead of the janitors. In Birmingham Schools they eliminated the union janitors in favor of hiring more teaching staff. Therefore, Roseville taxpayers are paying more for school custodians than Grosse Pointe and Birmingham residents. The 2007 average household income in Roseville is $43,593.00 per year while the Grosse Pointe Farms it was $104,314.00.; in Birmingham $86,838.00 I have wondered what Roseville State Representative Harold Haugh thinks of that? I asked Harold Haugh for a comment on this issue several MONTHS ago but have yet to hear back from him. What about the Roseville City Council? They can e-mail me with a comment at Rosevillecommunityfool@yahoo.com if they like. I will post their comment here.
I thought the parents and taxpayers of Roseville must be some of the most generous people around since they make LESS but don't mind paying MORE than the Grosse Pointers. At the beginning of my study I thought Roseville parents wanted to support the union because of a "blue collar belief" that they should support the union workers. After writing a research paper on Roseville Community Schools, speaking to dozens of people, collecting notes and data, I concluded that very few of Roseville residents had this "blue collar belief" I assumed they did. Instead, they simply did not know that they were paying more and getting less.
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Kent Count School Services Privatization Lawsuit
The Mackinac Center legal foundation (Mackinac.org) has filed a lawsuit on behalf of taxpayers to ensure that that school districts can hire private companies for certain jobs and save your tax money. This money can be better spent in the classroom.
roseville michigan test scores nepotism michigan
roseville michigan test scores nepotism michigan
Morals and Manipulation
I think that when school board members Joe Steenland and Bob Eineicher are given the choice of cutting the pay of their relatives or raising our taxes, the taxes get raised. In fact, at one school board meeting I attended Joe Steenland and Bob Eineicher were both discussing the concept of making custodians eligible for "inspiration awards" from the kids. Teachers and paraprofessionals are already eligible for the awards, so Steenland and Eineicher were lobbying heavily for the janitors to get them as well. I think that was the most pathetic display of self-serving manipulation of kids I have ever seen. Steenland and Eineicher obviously knew that other school districts were getting rid of their union janitors and they didn't want that to happen to their kin folks working for Roseville Community Schools. If they will talk like that at a school board meeting, I could only imagine what was said behind the scenes. Are board members telling their Janitor relatives to be extra nice to the kids and parents? Are the kids and parents being treated nicely or being manipulated?
Eineicher and Steenland went on to say that when they were in school the janitors had a huge influence on them because they were not part of the "smart crowd" and joked about being dumb and on the Roseville School Board of Education. I wish I were making that up but it is completely true. If you don't think dumb people end up on school boards, Google "Otis Mathis" in Detroit Public Schools.
The Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania is rated in the top ten business schools in America. They did a study on nepotism in the workplace and concluded that: "Those businesses that discourage nepotism do so because it may cause problems with favoritism, discipline fraud, confidentiality and liability."
Becky Vasil is the Deputy Superintendent of Roseville Community Schools and she lives in Bloomfield Hills where the school test scores are far better than Roseville. The average household income in Bloomfield Hills is over $118,000.00 per year while the average in Roseville is about $43,000.00. Becky Vasil earns over $120,000 per year from Roseville tax payers. Like Becky Vasil, Bloomfield Hills is a community of highly educated people. Bloomfield Hills is now considering eliminating the union maintenance jobs so that they can spend the saved money on educating their kids. Educated people tend not to support unions and uneducated or less educated people do. One exception is teachers. Teachers are both educated and belong to unions.
Are current school administrators lying?. I think so, here is the example.
June 2010, C & G Newspaper reported that Roseville Middle School was failing and the government was threatening to close the school unless certain conditions were met.
Assistant Superintendent Mike LaFeve told the reporter that Roseville Middle School had basically been given a raw deal, "no one told us" and Mr. LaFeve threw out some statistics that he figured no one in Roseville would understand and claimed Roseville Middle School made Adequate Yearly Progress for the past five years. Well, that is UNTRUE.
The Macomb Daily reported in 2007 that Roseville Middle School did NOT make Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) and half (3 of 6) failing schools in Macomb County just happen to be in Roseville and one of them was Roseville Middle School. Click here to see the article from the Macomb Daily.
Mike LaFeve must have forgotten that Roseville Middle did not make AYP, he forgot the Macomb Daily front page story about it, and forgot that I put the story on this website. He forgot? No, I think he lied and thought no one would notice.
Roseville MEAP scores are some of the worst in Macomb County. Roseville High School did not make Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) in recent years according to government requirements. In my opinion, that is why former Roseville State Senator and current city council member Mickey Swiltalski sent his son to a private school rather than Roseville schools.
Roseville High School MME Test Scores
In a recent issue of C & G News (the free newspaper delivered to your house) reporter Maria Allard quoted Roseville Assistant Superintendent Mike Lafeve as saying Roseville schools performs as well or better than other districts in the area. That is completely false.
Listed below are some facts from Greatschools.net which Maria Allard did not bother to look up. So, I did it for Maria. Greatschools.net compiles scores for most school districts in America and cites their data source as "MI Dept. of Education" for the data below. This source is the standard source for all studies in the state.
Reading:
Reading 2005 - 74% Meeting or exceeding standards.
Reading 2006 - 60% Meeting or exceeding standards. This represents a 14% DROP from 2005. The state average in 2006 was 70%.
Reading 2007 - 45% Meeting or exceeding standards.
Reading 2008 - 53% Meeting or exceeding standards. state average was 62%.
Reading 2009 - 50% Meeting or exceeding standards. state average was 62%.
Reading 2010 - 60% Meeting or exceeding standards. Average not available for this year.
Science:
Science 2005 - Data not given. However, it says the state average was 57% in 2005.
Science 2006 - 41% Meeting or exceeding standards.
Science 2007 - 40% Meeting or exceeding standards.
Science 2008 - 46% Meeting or exceeding standards. State average 57%.
Science 2009 - 43% Meeting or exceeding standards.
Science 2010 - 49% Meeting or exceeding standards. Average not available for this year.
Writing:
Writing 2005 - 45% Meeting or exceeding standards.
Writing 2006 - 40% Meeting or exceeding standards. State average for 2006 was 55%.
Writing 2007 - 19% Meeting or exceeding standards.
Writing 2008 - 26% Meeting or exceeding standards. State average was 41%.
Writing 2009 - 27% Meeting or exceeding standards.
Writing 2010 - 31% Meeting or exceeding standards. Average not available for this year.
Math:
Math 2005 - 48% Meeting or exceeding standards.
Math 2006 - 36% Meeting or exceeding standards. State average was 55% for 2006.
Math 2007 - 28% Meeting or exceeding standards.
Math 2008 - 31% Meeting or exceeding standards. State average was 46%.
Math 2009 - 32% Meeting or exceeding standards.
Math 2010 - 38% Meeting or exceeding standards.
Source: Michigan Dept. of Education via www.Greatschools.net. Please note that the past couple of years the scores have gone up a bit. I hope that is true but I doubt that is correct. I doubt it because funding is way down, teachers are fewer, class sizes are larger and many of our top students have fled the district to Utica, St. Clair Shores or Fraser school districts. And with all that going on, SCORES GO UP???
Click here to see the MME composite scores. Click the image again to make it larger. I am not sure why C & G News simply prints whatever they are told by Roseville Schools administrators but a few people have suggested that it is because the school district and the City of Roseville are two of the newspaper's biggest advertisers. A simple check of the facts shows that Roseville is one of the worst performing districts in Macomb County. In reading the spreadsheet, please note that Grosse Pointe and Birmingham math scores are more than DOUBLE (100% better) than Roseville scores and Roseville pays more for their school janitors than both of these districts. Nearly all educators agree that math and science are the most important subjects in school. The highest paying jobs all require a high degree of skill in math and science. I think this is an area we need to focus on far more. After teaching summer school math for two years in Roseville I noticed some areas that need improvement.
One of the first arguments used to explain the differences in the test scores is the amount of money spent per student in a given district. I calculated that Grosse Pointe spends about 23% more per student than Roseville. However, the math scores are 100% better. If the money were the only issue, the math scores should only be 23% better in Grosse Pointe. Roseville also spends 3% more on administrative costs than Grosse Pointe. See the pie chart for the graphic. Roseville spends more than Grosse Pointe because of nepotism. Board members like Joe Steenland, Theresa Genest and Bob Eineicher refuse to lay off their relatives and make necessary cuts. They are running an employment service for their relatives, not a school district and taxpayers are picking up the tab.
Also, Detroit Public Schools outspends Roseville schools by about 18% per student as shown here yet their scores are drastically lower than Roseville's. Money is certainly not the only factor impacting the scores. In Grosse Pointe 64% of the budget goes to instruction. In Roseville 59% goes toward instruction while Detroit spends just 54% directly on instruction. Grosse Pointe Schools seem to be better at managing their budget by cutting maintenance and administrative costs so more money is spent in the classroom. This gives the Grosse Pointe children an even bigger advantage over other districts like Roseville and Detroit.
I have asked educators, parents and students to explain why the expenditures in Grosse Pointe are only 26% higher yet their scores are 100% (double) the scores in Roseville. Most people point to expectations. The general consensus was that people who expect more get more and Roseville parents need to expect more for their taxes and put a higher value on education.
I interviewed several Roseville residents when conducting my research for my thesis project and none of the people I interviewed knew that the scores were so low in Roseville. I also interviewed Grosse Pointe parents and they seemed more aware of the scores. Conversely when I told the Grosse Pointe parents that Roseville parents paid more for their school janitors and the test scores were much lower, many shook their heads and some even laughed. An accountant and parent said that life is a 70 year marathon and some kids begin with a head-start, good coaches, a map and good running shoes. Other kids don't have a head-start, no coaches, no map and are barefoot. I thought that was an excellent analogy.
Most of the parents in Grosse Pointe had been to college and expected their kids to go to college. Most Roseville parents had not graduated from college but also expected their kids to go to college. The actual numbers shake out like this:
Nationally, 26% of Americans have a four year college degree.
Just about 8.9% have a graduate (masters) degree.
Half (50%) of the kids who graduate high school will attempt college, about half (50%) of those will drop out leaving about 26% to actually graduate from college.
Therefore about 26% have four year degrees. Those with a college degree will earn about 1 million more dollars in their life than those without degrees. Generally, the more education you have, the more money you make.
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The Results
1. Roseville Schools was featured on the front page of the Macomb Daily Click here to see the article indicating HALF of the failing schools in the county were in Roseville.
2. Beginning on December 17, 2009 the Macomb Daily ran a series of 3 articles about the "cronyism" and "unethical" actions of members of Roseville Schools. You see, Bob Eineicher, who was a school board member, resigned his post and was immediately hired by John Kment into a $80,000-$90,000 job working for the school district. Never enough money for the kids books, music programs, or more teachers but always plenty of money to hire another friend or relative of a Roseville insider. That's Roseville. The Roseville Community Schools parents did nothing about it. In fact, if you click on the link in the .pdf file it will take you to the articles on the Macomb Daily website. Very few Roseville residents commented on the articles. Some said the situation was no big deal. Some were critical of Roseville Schools. However, the most disturbing issue was the fact that NO ONE BUT ME used their real name when they commented! Are taxpayers and parents spineless or don't give a damn? I wish I knew.
3. August 25 2010, the Macomb Daily, Detroit News and C & G newspapers all wrote articles on the 92 lowest achieving schools in Michigan. Roseville Community Schools has the distinction of being the only suburban district with all (2) of their middle schools on the list of failing schools. Superintendents, John Kment, Mike LaFeve and Becky Vasil were not available for comment.
4. The Macomb Daily reported on October 4, 2009 page 7A that Roseville Community Schools lost 214 students for the 2009-2010 school year. Lakeview gained 205 students. And Roseville has had to close FIVE elementary schools for lack of students and money. But the union janitors kept their jobs. All of these schools received some of the $100 million dollars in bond money which will have to be paid off by taxpayers.
5. A year later, October 3, 2010. The Macomb Daily ran this story stating that Roseville Schools lost 393 students. The most lost students of any district in Macomb County. I think "schools of choice" and the Kment/Steenland model for running a school district is having an impact on our school district. Families are either moving out of Roseville or using schools of choice to take their kids to a better performing district. I would also guess that the kids leaving the Roseville district are some of the best academic performers and this will drag down Roseville test scores even farther.
6. June 2010, C & G Newspaper reported that Roseville Middle School was failing and the government was threatening to close the school unless certain conditions were met.
7. Roseville has one of the lowest MME composite test scores in the metro area. Click here to see the scores. If you remember nothing else from this site, please remember the scores. These scores are facts, not opinions.
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Conclusions
Taxpayers should worry.
Roseville has a "political class" and those people are fairly successful at influencing the elections leaving parents
with little say-so in school matters.
While the rest of us are out making a living the political class are working behind the scenes to get jobs, money and favors to support their interests. The typical tax payer, parent or student doesn't stand much of a chance against them. Unions are organized. That is why they call it "organized labor." They have mailing lists, contacts, members and they tell people which way to vote. The janitors of Roseville Schools have more say-so than parents do in district financial matters.
I found a list of Joe Steenland and Brent White campaign supporters online and placed the list of Joe Steenland and Brent White campaign supporters online and was not surprised at some of the names on the list. Many of these people don't even live in Roseville and some are contractors for Roseville Schools while others are school administrators. Imagine being a school administrator and being asked to contribute to the election campaign of the school Board President who decides if you get to keep your job or not. One of the names was Irene Kepler shown here in her most recent mug-shot who gave $12.50 to re-elect Joe Steenland. Irene is a classic Roseville political operative, very active in the Democratic party, former union member, former Roseville City Council member, currently working for Roseville State Representative Harold Haugh in Lansing when she isn't in jail for DUI.
I came to the conclusion that once a school district has become as dysfunctional as Roseville, it will take a super-human effort to fix it. It is easier to just move or, if you can afford it, send your kids to a private school.
Want to make a complaint? Here is the place to do it.
Michigan Department of Education
608 West Allegan Street
Lansing, MI 48915
(517) 373-3324