When The Music Stops

What Ann Arbor’s School Cuts Say About Public Education

Fifty years ago, Ann Arbor built a public high school on trust — and called it Community. It was a place where students learned by doing, where art, music, and curiosity weren’t electives but essentials. That spirit still lingers downtown, even as the rest of the district struggles to protect what’s left of it.

This year, Ann Arbor Public Schools faces a $25 million shortfall. Nearly a hundred teachers are being cut, world language has disappeared for grades 4–5, and art, music, and PE have all been reduced across elementary schools. The contrast is hard to miss: the same city that once created a national model for imaginative, student-driven learning is now trimming away the very subjects that made its schools vibrant.

What happens to a community when the creative parts of education — the ones that build connection, confidence, and joy — start disappearing from the school day?

When I think about what’s at stake, I can’t help but picture my own family’s link to Ann Arbor’s schools. My mother arrived here from Eagle Harbor at thirteen, wide-eyed after years in a one-room schoolhouse, and started classes at Jones School — the same building that would later become Community High, where my son Andy studied generations later. That sense of freedom and creativity shaped him, just as Jones School once shaped her.

🏫 The Numbers Behind the Shortfall

The AAPS budget gap, projected at about $25 million for the 2024–25 school year, grew out of several factors:

• Declining enrollment, particularly since COVID, means less state funding (which is based on student count).

• Rising payroll costs, as salaries and benefits increased faster than revenue.

• The end of federal pandemic relief funds (ESSER), which had temporarily covered support staff and special programs.

To balance the budget, the district voted to cut roughly 6 % of total spending.

That meant eliminating nearly 100 teaching and support positions, ending elementary world language instruction, and reducing time for the “specials” — art, music, physical education, and library — by about 20 %.

Most of the cuts were made district-wide, since Ann Arbor’s elementary schools share a common curriculum and staffing model. In effect, every child lost a little color in the week.

🎭 What Gets Lost When Art and Music Are Cut

Budgets are numbers, but what disappears isn’t numerical — it’s emotional.

Ask any adult to name a teacher they remember, and it’s rarely the one who prepared them for a standardized test. It’s the one who let them paint, sing, act, or build something new.

Art and music are connective tissue in a child’s education. They teach collaboration, patience, empathy, and problem-solving in ways that algebra can’t.

They also keep many students engaged who might otherwise drift away.

At Community High, the arts and jazz programs kept them excited about learning at a time when structure alone might have pushed them away. That’s what art and music do — they hold the human thread.

🌍 A National Pattern

Ann Arbor’s struggle mirrors what’s happening across the country.

Federal relief money that temporarily propped up local budgets is running out, and many districts are facing similar gaps.

Meanwhile, political battles over curriculum and “book bans” pull attention — and energy — away from real problems like teacher pay and classroom resources.

Nationally, about 62 % of teachers report frequent job-related stress — nearly double that of comparable professions.

Many say they’re losing the freedom to teach creatively, as testing demands and budget pressures crowd out the subjects that first inspired them to become teachers.

When the first cuts come, they rarely touch the testing software or data systems.

They come for the arts.

🌱 Remembering What Works

Ann Arbor doesn’t have to look far for a reminder of what makes education thrive.

Community High School still embodies the idea that learning is an act of creation. Its Jazz Program continues to win national awards — not because it’s lavishly funded, but because it values student voice, collaboration, and trust.

That model could guide the district now.

Partnerships with the University of Michigan School of Music, grants from local arts groups, or alumni mentoring could keep creative programs alive even in lean years.

Volunteer artists and retired teachers already step in quietly; with small stipends and recognition, they could help fill the gaps more formally.

The point isn’t nostalgia — it’s memory.

We’ve seen what happens when schools nurture creativity, and we’ve seen what happens when they starve it.

💬 The Heart of the Matter

Budgets come and go, but when we take the color out of school, we take the heartbeat out of it too.

The best schools — the ones that stay with us for life — are not the ones that tested us hardest, but the ones that let us imagine.

Community High taught an entire generation that creativity and rigor are not opposites; they’re partners.

If we forget that lesson, we risk losing more than music and art. We risk losing the very meaning of public education — a place where every child, no matter their neighborhood, can discover who they are and what they can make.

And somewhere in that old Jones School building — the place where my mother once studied and my son later found his voice — the music still plays, reminding us what public education can be when we let creativity lead.

📚 References

• Ann Arbor Public Schools. “2024–25 Budget Information.” a2schools.org/board-of-education/aaps-2024-25-operating-budget

• Michigan Public Radio (MPR). “Layoffs, budget cuts approved for Ann Arbor Public Schools.” May 21, 2024. michiganpublic.org

• WEMU News. “High payroll and low student population led to Ann Arbor Schools budget shortfall.” June 27, 2024. wemu.org

• RAND Corporation. State of the American Teacher Survey, 2025. rand.org

• National Education Association (NEA). “What new survey says about teachers’ plans to leave their jobs.” 2024. nea.org

• PEN America. Book Bans in the United States, 2024–25. pen.org