September 8th 2026 study session
PAACT BOARD RECAP
September 8, 2026 Special Meeting
Superintendent's Report
A short report before the main event
Dr. Roberson shared that Groves will open its One Love project the week of September 14. It is modeled on Seaholm's Bloom, where students can pick up clothing and other items and leave a note of gratitude in return.
She also recognized staff across the district for their handling of last Thursday's weather. Birmingham Covington School lost power that day, and a tornado warning hit around the time of elementary dismissal. She thanked the building staff who kept students calm and moving through an unusual afternoon.
Public Comment
Five speakers, two topics
Three speakers addressed the bell-to-bell wireless device policy adopted July 7, now in its fourth consecutive meeting of public comment. Two spoke on the Community House proposal and the staff who ran the center. We report what speakers said at the podium and attribute claims to them. We do not adjudicate any of it. Speaker names are as read by the board president.
On the wireless device policy
Andee Gorbatoff, whose twin sons graduated from Seaholm in 2023 and whose daughter is a Seaholm sophomore, returned to the podium after speaking August 25. She described 12 years volunteering in the BCS office and six on booster and PTA boards, and said she holds a master's degree in social work and has worked in juvenile justice and foster care residential settings and as a school social worker. She said she is not anti-mental health and supports phone-free classrooms, but does not support the high school bell-to-bell ban. She said the board committed to monitoring the policy's effects, that the research presented before adoption came from preschool and elementary parents and was not specific to high school lunch and passing time, and that the district seems to have embraced one book on the subject. She cited research she described as showing the link between social media and adolescent depression is largely correlational, that caregiver mental health is the strongest predictor of child mental health, that bell-to-bell bans do not reduce overall social media use, and that an Auburn University study recommended a tiered approach with privileges for older students in common areas, as neighboring districts use. She said asking staff how things are going will not produce an objective picture, and asked the board to have district leadership include high school parents in building a monitoring process with a survey of parents, students, and staff designed by someone with survey methodology expertise. She offered to email her sources.
Jennifer Brodjeski, parent of a Groves senior and a 2024 graduate, read a statement written by her daughter, who could not attend. Her daughter said she agrees with the instructional-time restriction, which aligns with state law and was already in place at Groves, but not with bell to bell. She said clubs communicate through GroupMe and teams through TeamSnap, and that for girls tennis the lineup, transportation, and match times often change during the school day. Under the current policy students see those updates only after the last bell, which she said can be too late to arrange rides. She said she has heard email will be used for extracurricular changes and asked how that works when students are not on laptops every period, and that seniors need email access during the day for college communication. On personal devices, she said the new district Chromebooks have smaller screens, run slowly, and block some class websites, and that she would rather use a laptop she knows and trusts. She asked the district to teach proper use of technology rather than ban it. Her mother closed the remarks with her own question, why BPS is the only district in the area with a high school bell-to-bell ban, and urged the board to reconsider now rather than next semester or next year.
Tyler Fipp, a Seaholm junior, opened with a lighthearted joke: good morning, good afternoon, good evening, whichever it was, since he did not have his phone to check. He said he was not asking the board to undo the instructional-time ban, only the lunch and passing-time restriction. He said every version of Michigan's cell phone law that lawmakers considered, including the strictest, limited high school students during instructional time only, and none proposed cutting off phones at lunch. He described a group of friends unable to text each other last week to coordinate off-campus lunch, a privilege the district already extends to them. He said high school is built on responsibility increasing each year, with more open periods and more trust, and that a bell-to-bell policy treats kindergartners and seniors identically at the point when students are supposed to be getting the most independence. Misuse, he said, is an enforcement issue with specific students, and the instructional-time policy already has consequences built in. He noted the board looks at neighboring districts when deciding snow days and asked it to do the same here. He closed: keep the ban during class, give back lunch and passing time.
From Community House parents
Adrienne Carey, a Birmingham resident whose child attended the Community House Early Childhood Center for two years before it closed in May, thanked the board for a proposal that keeps much of what the center offered. Her one ask was for the district to act on retaining Sarah Schuster, the center's former director. She said Schuster has been looking for other work because of the uncertainty and that an offer letter or some formal written communication would give her reason to hold on while the center gets up and running.
Kristen Bounty, also a Community House parent, thanked the board and said she knows the process has not been easy. She spoke for Sarah, Julie, and the teaching staff, who she said built something unique and gave her family its first friends when she moved to the area knowing no one. She said the teachers have been out of work since the May closure, that parents have been hiring them as nannies and babysitters to keep money in their pockets, and that they are holding out hope of returning. She said people have told the staff "we want you back" but follow-through has fallen short, and asked the district to move from talking to acting: an offer letter for the director and a start to the hiring process for teachers, so they do not take other jobs.
Presentation
The Community House Early Childhood Center proposal
Deputy Superintendent Cory Heitsch presented with Laura Tinsley, the former BPS Principal of Early Learning who has consulted for the district for about a year. The presentation in the posted agenda packet is dated July 2026; the version shown on screen at the meeting was dated September. This was the first public walk-through of the model since the August 11 special meeting recorded that the Community House selected BPS as its partner. The lease terms themselves were not presented in open session; they were the subject of the closed session that followed.
What BPS offers today
The district serves children from 15 months to four-plus years across 10 licensed programs: Wee Care at Groves (full-day toddlers and 3s preschool), the Midvale Early Childhood Center (full-day toddlers, 3s preschool, and three GSRP rooms), and eight elementary buildings that each hold at least one GSRP room, with a few holding two classrooms. Everything runs on the school calendar and school hours, with limited extended care at Midvale and Wee Care only. Tuition programs allow part-time enrollment of two half-days to five full days a week.
Current early childhood enrollment
39 toddlers · 44 half-day preschoolers (3s and 4s) · 63 full-day three-year-olds · 242 GSRP four-year-olds
Just shy of 400 pre-K students in total. Every full-day four-year-old in the district is in GSRP. Heitsch asked trustees to hold that 242 against the roughly 500 junior kindergarten and kindergarten students the district enrolled this year.
Heitsch described how GSRP got here. Three years ago Oakland Schools communicated to all Oakland County programs in August, two weeks before school started, that every four-year-old could attend under the state's expanded program. BPS contacted every registered four-year-old family to get them enrolled as quickly as possible and went from one income-based classroom to 15 this year. Tinsley later clarified that the first-year expansion was to seven classrooms with no income limit, and that the district reached 15 this school year. Heitsch said the expansion has been wonderful for four-year-olds and has come at a cost: every GSRP classroom added, particularly in an elementary building, has displaced a room that could have served three-year-olds and younger. This year Harlan and Quarton each had enough interest for two GSRP rooms but only two pre-K rooms available, so the district dropped the half-day tuition program at those buildings. He said the district chose the four-year-olds because it wants them in their neighborhood school as future kindergartners. GSRP is reimbursed by the state at a figure Heitsch put at a little over $12,000 per student, close to what a full-day Midvale family pays, though Dr. Roberson noted it is a reimbursement rather than a revenue program.
The proposed model
The Community House center would add to the existing menu rather than replace any of it. It would be a 12-month, full-day program mirroring the calendar and clock hours the Community House used, serving infants through four-year-olds on a full-time monthly tuition basis. The district has requested a state license for 110 children.
| Room | Ages | Licensed capacity |
|---|---|---|
| Infant room (1) | 6 weeks to 18 months | 8 |
| Toddler room (1) | 18 to 30 months | 10 |
| Preschool rooms (6) | 30 months to 4 years | 81 |
| Additional room | Previously designated junior kindergarten; would be licensed as preschool to reach 110 | 11 |
Heitsch made the point that licensed capacity, not demand, sets the ceiling. Even with staff for 30 infants the building can never hold more than eight. On tuition, a trustee asked why the model is full-time only. Heitsch explained that ratios require a fixed number of adults in each room regardless of how many days a family enrolls, so part-time enrollment does not automatically result in part-time staffing. A full-time tuition model gives a stable, known number to staff against, while the district's current part-time model at Midvale and the elementaries can leave revenue short of the staffing it still has to carry. Trustee Odeh added his opinion that the 12-month structure is also better for staffing, since year-round work is easier to fill and keep.
Why the license starts over
The Community House held a compliant license when it closed in May. Because that license closed, the state treats the center as new and requires a full application, every inspection, and any resulting work before a licensing consultant makes a final classroom visit. The district has submitted the state application. A City of Birmingham license follows later. Required inspections:
| Inspection | Status |
|---|---|
| Fire | Now handled by the state Bureau of Fire Services. Awaiting a date. |
| Boiler, heater, furnace | Inspector contacted. Scheduled closer to occupancy. |
| Environmental health | Inspector contacted. Scheduled closer to occupancy. |
| Lead | Being scheduled. |
| Filter First water | Not previously required of the Community House. Not yet done. |
| Playground | Completed. Nothing significant found. |
| Licensing site visit | Final step after all other inspections. |
Colleen Zammit asked whether anything could surface that had been grandfathered under the old license. Tinsley said yes, that is possible, and that a few walkthroughs have not found anything initially concerning. Zammit asked whether the landlord would be responsible for any work an inspection turns up, Heitsch said yes. Zammit also asked whether the district would face costs before a single child enrolls. Heitsch said potentially, for marketing and for staffing hired ahead of opening, plus some play equipment and consumables. He said the furniture was almost entirely left in place and is at the district's standard, so the classrooms are not a blank slate.
Timeline and demand
When the district first contacted the state in early August, the answer was two months best case. Heitsch now frames the timeline as running from a signed lease: two months from lease agreement, assuming inspections go cleanly, then enrollment, then staffing. He said the longer the process runs, the harder staffing may get. The plan at pre-occupancy is to announce an opening date, begin marketing and hiring, and let pre-enrollment dictate which rooms open first so the district is not staffing rooms it does not need.
Asked how he is gauging demand, Heitsch said he has met the former director twice in person and spoken with her by phone, most recently over the weekend. She kept a record of families committed for the upcoming year, including those who paid deposits last spring and those on the waitlist, and has offered to share it. BPS also has its own toddler waitlist, families who wanted a longer day this year but found those slots full, and families who put infants on the waitlist at birth. He said the district has not done formal outreach because it has no date to offer, but that anecdotally the regard for the center and the demand for a year-round model remain high. Trustee Odeh, who has young children, said waitlists across the area point to strong demand and called it a good endeavor.
From the packet's additional considerations
Historically BPS has served less than 50 percent of the community's available pre-K aged children (Heitsch cited about 48 percent, infant through age four). The district currently offers no 12-month, full-time, extended-day programming. Every pre-K, JK, K, and sometimes first grade classroom must be on the first floor, and only two elementaries are one level. The initial lease proposal is broken down by room, and the tuition model, with a director and food service, is described as structured to create a financially sustainable entity.
Also From The Meeting
Closed session
The board moved into closed session under MCL 15.268(1)(d), which permits a closed session to consider the purchase or lease of real property up to the time an option is obtained, and MCL 15.268(1)(h), to consider a written opinion of legal counsel.
PAACT's Note
What we noticed
This was the most complete public accounting of the Community House plan so far, and it answered the operating questions well: who is served, how rooms are licensed, why tuition is full-time only, and why the license has to start over. What it did not include is any dollar figure. Licensing and inspection costs, consultant costs, pre-opening staffing and marketing, and the lease terms themselves were not presented in open session. The packet says the lease proposal is structured to be financially sustainable; the board and the public have not yet seen the numbers behind that statement. As we noted in the August recaps, Dr. Roberson serves on the Community House Foundation board, the entity BPS would lease from, by appointment of the Birmingham City Commission. That was not discussed in open session. PAACT asked whether Dr. Roberson would take part in the closed session. The Open Meetings Act allows a closed session on a lease so that negotiations do not play out in public. Here the other party to those negotiations is The Community House board, and the superintendent sits on it. The written legal opinion the board went into closed session to consider is, as we understand it, about that conflict. Whether she was in the room for the closed session is a fair question, and we will report the answer when we have it.
Two other threads are worth following. First, the district said plainly that every GSRP room added has cost a room for three-year-olds and younger. That is a real trade-off, and families at Harlan and Quarton felt it this year. Second, the phone policy has now drawn public comment at four consecutive meetings. Tonight's asks were specific and modest: a monitoring process that includes high school parents, and a second look at lunch and passing time. The board has not responded to either in open session.
On The Calendar
Coming up
The Community House lease returns to the board once the closed-session review concludes; the next public step is a lease vote, then an announced opening date. The Groves One Love project opens the week of September 14. The October count day is the first Wednesday of October. The $240 million bond is on the November 3 ballot alongside three board seats. Every regular meeting and study session includes public comment.
