The Michigan Benchmark Story
My name is Brendan Walsh and I am the Founder of Michigan Benchmark, LLC. Thanks for visiting our site.
​
School Board members are from Venus. The Administration is from Mars. Yet here they are...on the same planet, lacking a common language.
Michigan Benchmark helps deliver the common language. Doing so improves the working relationship among school boards, administrators, and taxpayers by presenting school district financial and operational data that can be understood by all parties.
By providing this common language all parties can work better together. This allows the focus to remain on student growth in a healthy learning environment. Better decisions are made, rooted in fact patterns, and presented with next level transparency.
The Backstory
I became a Michigan school finance experts out of necessity. I have applied the knowledge I have gained into service offers that help school boards and administrators work better together.
​
Helping Michigan schools was my first calling. I graduated from the University of Michigan - Ann Arbor with every intention of becoming a teacher. I did my student teaching at Detroit's Cass Tech High School. From there I went to work as a permanent building substitute at Detroit's Southeastern High School. I struggled to find a regular position due in large part to the chaos of Michigan public school funding. In fact the situation was so bad that the state completely revamped its school funding system by adopting "Proposal A" in 1993.
​
My timing could not have been worse...and I needed to get on with a career. I started a career in technology (sales, then marketing, then management, then executive leadership). But public schools were always in my blood.
​
As my own children started in the local public schools, I started to pay attention to school board events. Yes, they were just as crazy then as they are now. But I was hooked. I enjoyed it all. There was an opening on the school board. I applied and was appointed. I'd run and win again three times. I was in this game.
I began my school board service in 2003 when Michigan public schools started to experience their first financial distress since the passage of Michigan's landmark "Proposal A" in 1993. In those first ten years under Proposal A's new school funding mechanism that shifted funding responsibility primarily onto the state (away from local districts), the state economy continued to grow.
​
The early 2000's saw the rise of technology. Economic power was becoming unmoored from Michigan's legacy strength - cars and manufacturing. Any by this time (2004) the country was ten years deeper into the post-NAFTA world where international labor influences became threats to legacy manufacturing economies such as Michigan's.
​
Just as things began to stabilize, here came the banking and financial crises of the late 2000's. Michigan's weakened economy got crushed. And since school funding was now so closely tied to state tax revenues, times were awful. In 2009, for the first time, Michigan's per pupil Foundation Allowance was cut, a brutal pattern that continued through 2012.
​
This was the worst time ever (including to this day) for Michigan public schools. I served on the Board of what was considered a "wealthy district". Citizens who were unaccustomed to the belt tightening required were incredulous of the financial and operational implications of these dynamics.
​
Serving on the Board of Education from 2004 through 2012, I learned everything I could about Michigan school finance and school district operations. My personal experiences on the Board fused with my professional life in which I worked as a technology consultant, then as a Chief Information Officer of a company, then as a Chief Digital Officer, and then as President of an international company. I combined all of these skills and avocations to help my community understand why these drastic changes were necessary.
​
I created so many materials and amassed so much data that I was able to share back with our community how our district specifically compared to all other Michigan school districts. These efforts became the precursor of the Michigan Benchmark Report, one of our company's core offers today.
​
Building budgets which were forced to address multi-million dollar annual projected shortfalls became increasingly difficult and contentious. To cut through the chaos, I found that by using interactive, dynamic interfaces that communication and better decision making ensued.
​
Applying Lessons Learned
Michigan Benchmark is my effort to apply the hard lessons learned about proper oversight on school district budgets. This is NOT the same as school boards doing the work of the administration. It IS about understanding the data, the context, and the politics well enough to be able to explain and operationalize the lessons for the benefit of all Michigan school board members and, by extension, their administrators and taxpayers.
​
I got into this game so I could stay close to public education, which was my first passion. Life took me on a circuitous route to remain a part of this. Now I am doing what I truly love, helping school boards and educators create the best opportunities for teachers, staff, and students.
​
Now I want to help you and your local school district.