Troy, Michigan · Independent · Not affiliated with the District

What do you actually want from
Troy School District?

Three questions. Your answers go to me, a Troy resident — not to the District — and I will publish what I learn. Everything the third question refers to is on this page: the District's own budget, its own list of proposed cuts, and the arithmetic on a revenue option it has barely used.

Why I'm asking, and what I'm putting behind it

Turnout for the August 4 school funding vote was 36.6%. Board meetings draw a few dozen people out of a district of roughly 12,000 students. Decisions worth tens of millions of dollars are being made in near-silence. I'd like to change that a little, and I'm willing to pay for the privilege of your attention.

What you get

Survey opens
Aug 5
2026
Closes
Oct 22
12 days before the election
General election
Nov 3
Tuesday, 2026
Responses so far
—
Troy residents and families

Closing 12 days before the election is deliberate. The results are meant to inform how people think about the District, not to land as an October surprise with no time to argue with it.

Where things stand, in four numbers

You don't need any of this to answer questions 1 and 2. It's here because question 3 asks you about specific decisions, and you should be able to see them.

Aug 4 millage
Failed
48.99% yes countywide · 42.91% in Troy
Revenue that didn't arrive
$8.1M
per year, budgeted in two of three scenarios
FY2027 reduction target
$12M
plus $7M in FY28 and $7M in FY29
Enrollment, FY26 → FY29
−582
12,069 → 11,487 projected FTE
August 4, 2026

Oakland County voters rejected the Oakland Schools regional enhancement millage — 1.5 mills for six years — by 6,703 votes: 163,120 yes (48.99%) to 169,823 no (51.01%), all 395 precincts reporting. In the City of Troy the margin was wider: 8,821 yes (42.91%) to 11,736 no (57.09%).

Troy School District had built $8,100,000 a year of enhancement millage revenue into two of the three four-year scenarios it showed the Board on July 22. Those two scenarios are now off the table. The remaining one — Scenario 1 — is the plan.

The District's own three scenarios

Presented to the Board of Education, July 22, 2026. Fund balance as a percentage of expenditures is the District's headline solvency measure; the Board's informal floor has been in the mid-teens.

General Fund, fund balance as % of expenditures
ScenarioReductions FY27 / 28 / 29FY26FY27FY28FY29
1 — No millage (what happened)$12M / $7M / $7M13.52%14.42%13.96%14.03%
2 — Millage passes$12M / $7M / $7M13.52%18.61%18.27%18.48%
3 — Millage passes, smaller cuts$12M / $3M / $3M13.52%18.61%15.88%16.07%

Read together: the millage was never the difference between cutting and not cutting in FY27 — $12 million comes out either way. What it bought was the ability to cut $3 million instead of $7 million in each of the two years after that, and a fund balance in the 18s instead of the 14s.

General Fund Scenarios, 4-year — Board of Education, July 22, 2026

1 page · PDF · presented at the Regular Meeting of the Board of Education, July 22, 2026. Retrieved from the district document archive.

Open the PDF ↗ Search the full board archive ↗
Question 1 of 3
What is your impression of Troy School District?

Whatever comes to mind. Your own experience, your kids' experience, what you hear from neighbours, what you thought when you moved here versus what you think now. There's no wrong answer and nothing is being scored.

0 characters
Question 2 of 3
What do you want from Troy School District?

Not what you think is realistic — what you actually want. Academics, class sizes, buildings, communication, discipline, transportation, special education, athletics, how money is spent, how decisions get made. If you could change one thing, what would it be?

0 characters
Question 3 of 3
Three things at once — and this one has homework attached.

Question 3 is really three questions, and the material behind each is below. Read as much of it as you want, skip what you don't, then answer in the box at the end.

  1. Do you align with the District's approach to budgeting? The FY2027 budget is here.
  2. Do you agree with the District's approach to cost reduction? All 37 proposed cuts are here, with the scores and tiers the administration assigned them.
  3. Should Troy raise revenue by enrolling more Section 105/105c (Schools of Choice) students — historically thought of as a ceiling of about 10% of enrollment, roughly 1,100–1,300 students? The arithmetic on what those students are actually worth is here, including the rule that costs Troy $786 per student and that almost nobody mentions.

3a. The budget the Board adopted

Adopted June 16, 2026 for the fiscal year that began July 1. The General Fund is the operating budget — salaries, benefits, instruction, buildings, buses. It is separate from the bond and sinking fund money that pays for construction, which by law cannot be spent on operations.

General Fund — Troy School District
 FY2026 originalFY2026 amend. #3FY2027 proposed
Revenue$190,545,984$202,153,044$191,055,509
Expenditures$194,285,613$207,641,522$193,342,088
Change in fund balance$(3,739,629)$(5,488,478)$(2,286,579)
Beginning fund balance$32,979,691$33,713,795$28,225,317
Ending fund balance$29,240,062$28,225,317$25,938,738
As % of expenditures15.05%13.59%13.42%

What the FY2027 budget assumes

  • 11,869 blended FTE students, down from 12,069 — a loss of 200 students.
  • The lowest per-pupil increase among the Governor's, House's and Senate's proposals — $250 — and the lowest figure proposed for each categorical grant. Budgeting to the floor of the range is a deliberately conservative choice.
  • $12,000,000 of expenditure reductions, already netted into the $193.3M expenditure line. Without them the number would be $205.3M.
The state budget came in above the assumption

Michigan's FY2026-27 school aid budget was signed on July 21, 2026 at a $10,300 per-pupil basic foundation allowance. By the District's July 22 scenario sheet, final state revenue is $193,155,509 — about $2.1 million more than the June assumption. That turns the projected FY2027 fund balance change from −$2,286,579 into −$186,579: very close to break-even, after the $12M of cuts.

The tax rates that go with it

Levied for 2026-27. Only the hold-harmless rate moves with the District's own decisions; the rest are fixed by statute or by voter-approved debt.

LevyMillsFalls on
Operating18.0000Non-homestead property
Commercial personal property8.4102Business equipment
Hold harmless2.4102Homestead (down from 2.5796 and 2.7294)
Debt retirement6.1000All property — bond repayment
Sinking fund0.9473All property — capital repair

Hold harmless is the mechanism that matters for question 3c. Troy is one of a minority of Michigan districts allowed to levy a local homestead tax on top of the state foundation allowance, because it was spending above the state formula when Proposal A passed in 1994. It is why Troy's per-pupil foundation allowance is $11,086 in FY2027 while the state basic is $10,300.

Budget Amendment #3 and FY2027 Proposed Budget — June 16, 2026

29 pages · PDF · the truth-in-taxation hearing, millage rates, final FY2026 amendments and the FY2027 proposal for every fund.

Open the PDF ↗
FY2027 Budget Adoption Resolutions — June 16, 2026

The appropriation resolution itself: ten funds, and the millage rates in the table above.

Open the PDF ↗

3b. The $12 million in cost reductions

On June 1, 2026 the administration gave the Board a document titled Budget Reduction Scenario, marked "DOCUMENT IS IN PROGRESS." It contains 37 proposals, each scored against six weighted criteria and sorted into three tiers. Everything in this section comes out of that document, reproduced in full.

Reduction goal
$12.0M
FY2027
Scenario total
$11.64M
$360,649 short
Proposals
37
across 11 areas · 36 itemised
Average score
4.32
out of 5.0

Where the money comes from

Proposed annual savings by department
37 proposals · $11,639,351 total
Special education accounts for $3.23 million across 8 of the 37 proposals — more than any other single function. The District's note on that is quoted below.

How the proposals were scored

Each proposal was rated 1–5 on six criteria; the weighted total sets its tier. A 5 means minimal negative impact, high feasibility, broad support; a 1 means severe impact or legal risk and widespread opposition.

CriterionWeightWhat a high score means
Impact on student learning30%Minimal disruption to core learning
Equity impact20%Does not fall disproportionately on high-need students
Legal / compliance risk15%Complies with law, policy and labor agreements
Cost savings amount15%Substantial, recurring savings
Feasibility / timeline10%Can be done in time with existing capacity
Stakeholder support10%Staff and families will understand it
TierScoreSavingsShareMeaning
Tier 1 — Strong candidate4.0–5.0$8,909,72576.5%Recommended for inclusion
Tier 2 — Consider3.0–3.9$2,094,52618.0%Needs planning or phasing
Tier 3 — High riskbelow 3.0$635,1005.5%Needs further study or redesign

Every proposal on the list

Click a column heading to sort. This is the detailed proposal list from the June 1 document, transcribed verbatim, with each area's savings reconciled against the document's own summary table.

One thing doesn't add up, and it isn't mine

The document's summary counts 37 proposals and lists 5 under Secondary. Its detailed list contains 36, with 4 under Secondary. Every dollar figure still reconciles — Secondary's four line items sum to exactly the $1,687,800 the summary reports, and all 36 sum to $11,639,351 — so a proposal appears to be counted in the summary without a row in the detail, or carries no savings. On a document stamped "DOCUMENT IS IN PROGRESS" that is unremarkable, but it is worth knowing that the public list is one item short of the public count.

Area Proposal Savings Score Tier
Total — 36 itemised$11,639,3514.32 avg
The District's note on special education

"Special education remains one of our highest priorities and largest areas of investment in the district. […] all special education programs will continue to be staffed in alignment with state and county requirements […] These decisions are guided by each student's Individualized Education Program (IEP) and are mandated to comply with all legal and educational standards."

The same document gives the reason it is on the list at all:

Special education cost, as presented to the Board
 2018-192024-25Change
Cost — IEP & non-IEP$16,744,610$29,210,999+$12,466,389 (+74%)
Students served1,3321,367+35 (+3%)

Cost per special education student rose from about $12,571 to about $21,369 in six years. Whether that reflects rising need, a state-driven shift in service delivery, or something the District controls is exactly the kind of thing worth an opinion in the box below.

Budget Reduction Scenario — Board of Education workshop, June 1, 2026

5 pages · PDF · marked "DOCUMENT IS IN PROGRESS." The source for every figure in this section. Items the Board flagged for further conversation are printed in red in the original.

Open the PDF ↗

3c. Schools of Choice — what a Section 105/105c student is actually worth

This is the part almost nobody has run the numbers on, so I did.

Sections 105 and 105c of Michigan's State School Aid Act let a district enrol students who live somewhere else and count them in its own membership, without the home district's permission. Section 105 covers students from other districts inside Oakland County. Section 105c covers students from districts in a neighbouring county's ISD — Macomb, Wayne, Livingston, Genesee, Lapeer, Washtenaw. Participation is entirely voluntary, decided by the Board every year, and the District chooses the grades, the buildings, and the number of seats.

The rule that changes the whole calculation

Per the Michigan Department of Education: "School districts that enroll nonresident students under Section 105 or 105c receive the lesser of their own foundation allowance or the foundation allowance of the district of residence."

Troy's FY2027 foundation allowance is $11,086, because Troy is a hold-harmless district. The state basic allowance — what most Oakland County districts get — is $10,300. So for a choice student from an at-basic district, Troy receives $10,300, not $11,086. Every Schools of Choice student is worth $786 less than a Troy resident sitting in the same chair.

That is a 7.1% haircut. It does not make the students unprofitable — it makes them about 93 cents on the dollar. Any estimate that multiplies students by $11,086 is too high by roughly $786 apiece, which at 1,200 students is $943,000 a year of revenue that was never there.

What Troy does today

Troy runs what the resolutions call a "Limited" program: a fixed number of seats, only at entry grades. For 2026-27 the Board authorised 116 seats on December 16, 2025 — and only in kindergarten, first grade, and grades 6–8. No high school seats. Several buildings have been closed to open enrolment outright in past years: Barnard, Bemis, Schroeder, Boulan Park, Athens and Troy High.

Seats authorised for 2026-27
Grade§105 (in county)§105c (contiguous ISD)Total
Kindergarten83487
First grade25126
Grades 6–8 combined213
Total1106116

In 2025-26 there were 173 Schools of Choice students in Troy's elementary buildings — 3.54% of elementary enrolment. The concentration is uneven: Hill Elementary is at 10.57%, Wass at 6.35%, Wattles at 5.54%; Schroeder is at 0.00% and Bemis at 0.24%.

Eighteen years of demand

Kindergarten Schools of Choice: seats offered, applications received, students enrolled
Troy School District, 2008-09 through 2025-26
Across all eighteen years the District advertised 1,114 kindergarten seats, received 2,300 applications, and enrolled 1,103 kindergarteners. Applications have never exceeded 188 in a single year — and when Troy advertised 160 seats in 2011-12 it received 142 applications. Demand is real, but it is not unlimited, and it does not scale with the number of seats offered.
Table view — the same data
YearKdg. seatsKdg. applicationsKdg. enrolled
Total1,1142,3001,103

Who choice students are

2025-26, elementary buildings. This matters because it is the cost side of the ledger, and because it is a fair question whether the District should be thinking about these students as revenue at all.

 Choice studentsResident studentsDifference
Free / reduced lunch54.34%28.91%+25.4 pts
Special education19.65%13.87%+5.8 pts
English learners10.98%24.92%−13.9 pts

The special education gap is the one with a price tag. Troy spends about $21,369 per special education student against a district-wide General Fund average of about $16,290 — a gap of roughly $5,079. An extra 5.8 percentage points of special education share therefore costs on the order of $294 per choice student. The higher free/reduced-lunch share cuts the other way: it draws additional Section 31a at-risk funding. The lower English-learner share reduces EL service cost. Net, the demographic mix is worth a few hundred dollars per student — real, but an order of magnitude smaller than the $786 foundation haircut.

Run the numbers yourself

Defaults are set to the District's own figures and to the premise in question 3 — about 1,100–1,300 students, or roughly 10% of enrolment. Move anything you disagree with.

Beyond today's roughly 175. The 10%-of-enrolment premise is about 1,200.
The lesser of Troy's allowance and the sending district's. Almost every Oakland district is at the state basic.
Enrolment is falling by about 200 a year, so some choice students cost nothing extra to seat. The rest need a new section.
Troy elementary sections run in the mid-20s.
The District's own June 1 numbers imply $87,000 (10 secondary FTE for $870,000) to $156,600 (5 elementary FTE for $783,000).
The special education / at-risk / EL mix, derived above at about $294. Set it higher if you think the mix is worse than the District's own data shows.
The ramp. Today's authorisation is 116 seats; the District actually enrolled 62 in 2025-26.
Net annual contribution at steady state
—
Gross foundation revenue—
New sections needed —
Extra support cost—
Net per year—
Per student, net—
Years to reach it—
vs. the failed millage ($8.1M/yr)—
vs. the FY27 cut target ($12.0M)—
vs. FY28 & FY29 cuts ($7.0M/yr)—
Two things the calculator can't fix

It takes years, not months. Choice students enter at kindergarten and, by statute, may stay until they graduate. Filling every one of the 116 authorised seats every year builds toward the target one grade at a time — see the ramp below. Nothing here helps with the $12 million due in FY2027.

You cannot un-enrol them. A student admitted under §105 or §105c has the right to remain through graduation, and their siblings get first claim on future seats. This is a thirteen-year commitment made one year at a time.

The ramp, year by year

At the rate set above, holding every student to graduation
YearCumulative choice studentsGross revenueNet contribution
The honest summary

At the District's own authorisation of 116 seats a year, held to graduation across thirteen grades, the steady-state population is roughly 1,200–1,500 students — which is where the "10% of enrolment, 1,100–1,300 students" figure comes from. It checks out. At $10,300 apiece that is $12.4 million a year gross and, on the default assumptions above, about $8.8 million net — coincidentally almost exactly the $8.1 million the enhancement millage would have raised.

But it arrives over about a decade, only if every seat fills every year, and only if the applications show up. In 2025-26 Troy advertised 52 kindergarten seats, received 59 applications, and enrolled 37. Getting to 116 filled seats a year — let alone more — means opening grades and buildings that are currently closed, and competing for families the District has not historically courted.

That is the actual question: not whether the money is real — it is — but whether Troy wants to be a district that recruits.

Schools of Choice Recommendations for 2026-27 — Board workshop, December 9, 2025

10 pages · PDF · the enrolment projections, the eighteen-year application history, the building-by-building and demographic breakdowns, and the administration's seat recommendation. The source for every Schools of Choice figure on this page.

Open the PDF ↗

One caveat I want to be straight about. Troy's hold-harmless levy is recalculated every year from enrolment, taxable values and the foundation allowance. How adding several hundred nonresident students — who generate the lower allowance — interacts with that calculation is a question for the District's business office, and I have not been able to resolve it from public documents. It could move the per-student figure in either direction. Everything else on this page is straight out of the sources listed at the bottom.

Question 3 of 3 — your answer
Budgeting, cost reduction, and Schools of Choice.

Answer any part of it. If you only have a view on one of the three, say that. If you think the whole framing is wrong, say that — that's useful too.

0 characters

Contact — entirely optional

Leave this blank and your response is anonymous. That's a perfectly good choice, and the answers count the same. Leaving it blank also means you are not in the gift card drawing, because I'd have no way to reach you.

Whatever you put here is used for exactly two things: the drawing, and following up if you asked me to. It is never published, never sold, never shared with the District or anyone else, and it is deleted after the drawing unless you asked to be kept in touch.

Who may see what you wrote

This is entirely your call, and it is the only thing on this page I'd ask you to read twice. Nothing is shared with anyone unless you tick the box.

What each choice actually means

 TickedBlank
Counted in published totalsYesYes
Read by meYesYes
Given to candidates & the DistrictAnonymisedNo
Quoted in the write-upAnonymisedNo
Your name or contact attachedNeverNever
In the gift card drawingDepends only on whether you left contact details — not on this box

"Anonymised" means what it says. Your name, email, phone and address never leave my hands — not to candidates, not to the District, not to anyone. If a response contains a detail that would identify you even without a name ("I'm the parent who spoke at the March 17 meeting"), I'll cut it or leave the response out entirely rather than risk it.

Leaving the box blank costs you nothing. Your answer still counts in every number I publish, and I still read it — it just doesn't get handed onward. And if you change your mind in either direction later, email me and I'll act on it.

Send it

One quick check that you're a person, and that's it. Nothing on this page requires an account and nothing tracks you between visits.

The gift card, the $500, and the fine print

$100 Amazon.com gift card drawing

The $500 to the Troy Foundation for Educational Excellence

The committee behind the Yes campaign — branded "YES for Oakland Kids," registered with Oakland County as YES for Stronger Neighborhood Schools — reported a $500 direct contribution received June 26, 2026 from Richard Machesky. Troy's Superintendent is Dr. Richard M. Machesky. It is on page 71 of the committee's pre-election statement, and you can read the page yourself below.

I am matching that $500, personally, to the Troy Foundation for Educational Excellence — a 501(c)(3) whose stated mission is to "strengthen the educational excellence of Troy School District Pre-K-12 Students by funding learning opportunities, through private support."

Contribution record number 4727 from the committee's pre-election statement. Date of receipt 06/26/2026. Amount 500.00. Cumulative 500.00. Name: Richard Machesky. Occupation: Not employed. Employer: None. Street address redacted. City: Chesterfield Towns, State MI. Type of contribution: Direct.
Record #4727, page 71 of the pre-election statement filed with the Oakland County Elections Division on July 24, 2026 by YES for Stronger Neighborhood Schools (committee ID 98896, a ballot question committee formed May 5, 2026). The street address is redacted here — it is in the filing, which is linked in full below; nothing else is altered.
Page 71 as filed ↗ The full 117-page statement ↗ Oakland County's campaign finance search ↗
One detail doesn't line up, so judge it yourself

The filing lists this contributor's occupation as "Not employed," employer as "None," and an address in Chesterfield Township — none of which describes a sitting superintendent under contract through June 2029. Those fields are self-reported by the donor, and this committee's entries are inconsistent throughout: most contributors have no occupation or employer listed at all.

So what the record establishes is this: a Richard Machesky gave $500 on June 26, 2026. That the contributor is Troy's Superintendent is an inference from the name and the timing, and the document does not confirm it. I'd rather hand you the page and say that plainly than round it off. My $500 goes to the Foundation either way.

For scale: the committee reported $91,087 in itemized contributions and $27,906 in in-kind support against $69,625 of spending through July 19. The largest single contribution from a Troy source was $3,000 from the Troy Education Association on June 2.

This is not contingent on anything. It doesn't depend on how many responses come in, or what they say, or whether the survey embarrasses anyone. I'll post the receipt here when it's made. The point is a simple one: if you think a school district needs more money, there is a way to give it money that doesn't require winning an election.

What happens to your answers