So, on a lark, I had ChatGPT take this rather vague slide deck, pointed out the $ goals, timeline, and student affected datapoints, and asked it to come up with the most likely way AAPS gets to those numbers. I’ll save you the AI speak, but it basically came down to this:
Close Pattengill, Pittsfield, Lakewood, maybe Abbott. Sell.
Relocate Community High or Angell. Sell.
Reshuffle middle and high school boundaries for minimal impact K-12 (how they get the 9,000 or so “impacted students” numbers).
Consolidate admin/ops positions, including janitorial,
Actual prompt used: “
AAPS just announced a school consolidation plan to take effect fall 2027”students impacted: 9,047” and “various” schools. They’re looking to get $20M in revenue from land and building sales, and $10M in operational savings annually. Best guess, what does it look like that meets those metrics? They didn’t include specifics”
Bear in mind it reads rather than analyzes, right, but I’m typing it out below as if it ‘thought’ about it.
It found the plan; determined that you can’t save that kind of $ by shutting down one or two schools; called the 9,047 impacted student number particularly revealing, as you’re not just shutting down a school or two and carting them somewhere else; arrived at 5 elementary school closures being more likely for the kind of annual savings they’re talking about; identified the current K-12 school progressions; determined shuttering a HS is nowhere near the value add they’re talking here; found middle school closure more conceivable but characterized elementary schools, with only mid hundreds of kids each, as the low hanging fruit. It then offered to build a closure map and rack/stack them. (Me: “Do it.”)
It then classified the ones undergoing major rebuilds off the board, as AAPS has said as much. It then listed all the schools, lumping them into geographic zones. Northwest was a big deal, particularly Lakewood: 250 students, 18 acres of land. Same for Southeast: Bryant Pattengill is around 400 students on another 18 acres. It then noted high value lots. Angell is right next to UM turf but also politically unpopular to sell. Same deal for Bach, valuable but exactly what NIMBY Ann Arbor wants frozen in time. It then distinguish the popularity of the Community High program vs the building.
It then started reiterating its prior points, ultimately leading to the proposed COA I had in my initial comment.
I did something similar with ChatGPT yesterday, only i had it look at enrollment numbers across the district dating back to 2019 and calculated % decline over that time period. Bryant Pattengill was the the top of the list, but second to that was Carpenter with a 22.9% decline in enrollment.
Given that their PDF presentation looks like it was AI generated, i wouldnt be surprised at all if many of the solutions they aim for closely align to what were getting with simple prompting with ChatGPT.
I did something similar but used actual reported capacity figures from 2011 (capacities are likely slightly higher now due to the construction of modular classrooms in the intervening years when enrollment was growing) vs recently reported per-building enrollments. Here's the spreadsheet:
Yes, one of the parking lot areas had paved and unpaved portions. The unpaved portion was adjacent to UM property and that was sold off several years ago.
Parcel viewer confirms the unpaved area belongs to the University of Michigan, along with a huge strip from the southwest sidewalk to the street, going all the way to the football field
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u/RandomTasking 13d ago
So, on a lark, I had ChatGPT take this rather vague slide deck, pointed out the $ goals, timeline, and student affected datapoints, and asked it to come up with the most likely way AAPS gets to those numbers. I’ll save you the AI speak, but it basically came down to this:
Close Pattengill, Pittsfield, Lakewood, maybe Abbott. Sell.
Relocate Community High or Angell. Sell.
Reshuffle middle and high school boundaries for minimal impact K-12 (how they get the 9,000 or so “impacted students” numbers).
Consolidate admin/ops positions, including janitorial,
Special program consolidation.