To the editor:
This letter is from a Hopkins High School graduate and a Florida school district chief financial officer. I’m writing because Hopkins Public Schools gave me my first professional job, and I want the next generation of Hopkins kids to get the same kind of start I did.
The 2007 bond paid for the 1:1 computer initiative I learned on and the virtual learning it made possible. It also funded the district technology department where I got my start: work-study during the school year, summer employment, and a full-time position after graduation that I held for years. That job launched my career, and I’m fairly certain I wouldn’t be where I am today without it.
I also had Scott VanBonn for seventh grade science when I went through middle school. He’s the district’s superintendent now, and has been an educator for 25-plus years.
Scott lives and breathes Hopkins Public Schools, and always has. That’s the kind of leadership running this district. Today, I’m the CFO for Charlotte County Public Schools in Florida, helping oversee 20-plus schools, more than 18,000 students, and a budget of more than half a billion dollars. Capital planning for a public school district is what I do for a living, and that’s why I’m speaking up, even though I can’t vote on this bond myself.
The taxes-should-go-down argument:
The strongest objection I’ve heard is that the 2007 bond is retiring, so taxes should drop rather than stay flat. That’s a fair point, and it deserves a real answer. Infrastructure doesn’t pause when we do. Roofs age, HVAC fails, boilers give out, fire panels go out of code.
The real choice in front of Hopkins voters isn’t whether to fund a bond. It’s whether to plan for the work or pay for it in emergencies.
I’ve worked that problem before. Before Charlotte County I was at DeSoto County Schools (FL), which has some of the oldest school facilities in the state. Their current capital work is replacement, not upgrades, because maintaining systems that far past useful life had become more expensive than just replacing them. That’s what happens when a community waits.
Replacing the major building systems (HVAC, chillers, boilers) in a building the size of Hopkins Middle School can run several million dollars. When one of those goes down in February, nobody competitively bids it. You just write the check.
The upside to planned replacement is that modern equipment runs significantly more efficiently than what it replaces, which lowers operating costs for years afterward.
I read the district’s audited financials because “trust me, I’m a CFO” isn’t an argument. I pulled Hopkins’ most recent audit, the report for the year ended June 30, 2025. It’s a clean audit. Unmodified opinion. No material weaknesses.
The books are credible and the controls work. The district is running lean. The board targets a 15% fund balance; actual is 13.06%. The general fund ran a small deficit last year. Enrollment is still below the pre-pandemic peak of roughly 1,660. It was 1,442 this fall.
Federal safety grants are winding down. The district expects to borrow about $2.78 million in state aid notes just to manage cash flow through the coming year.
None of that is alarming on its own. It’s a pretty typical picture of a well-run rural Michigan district. But it tells you something important: there’s no hidden reserve the district could tap instead. The sinking fund generate about $632,000 a year. That’s a fraction of what it costs to replace the major systems.
Replacing the middle school building
Replacing the middle school itself or a major system out of operations funding isn’t a tough decision. It’s mathematically impossible. Without bond funding, the district’s only real option is to do piecemeal repairs together as things fail. Patch what can be patched, defer what can’t, and absorb emergency costs that always come in higher than planned replacement.
Classrooms end up a little worse every year. Parts of the middle school are more than 90 years old. Waiting for a better economy doesn’t make concrete, steel or interest rates cheaper. The safety pieces (fire alarms, PA systems, building security upgrades) aren’t window dressing. Those are the systems that work, or don’t, when something goes wrong.
I was a band geek and a performing arts center would have meant something to me. I was also a business student and a tech work-study kid, and those investments meant just as much.
A public school’s job is to build the environment where any student can find what lights them up. You don’t know at 13 who’s going to turn out to be the musician, the welder, the engineer, the teacher, or the CFO.
Hopkins is chosen
Michigan is a schools of choice state. Families around Hopkins have other options, and plenty of nearby districts would be glad to take Hopkins students. They choose Hopkins because this district is the heart of the community. As a CFO, I can tell you that enrollment equals revenue. When districts let their facilities slide, the families with choices start making different ones. Once that starts, it’s hard to reverse. Give them a reason to keep choosing Hopkins.
My ask:
I know what it looks like when a community invests in its kids, because I’m one of them. And I’ve rebuilt enough aging facilities in my career to know what it looks like when a community doesn’t. Hopkins’ own books show the district can’t solve this one alone. The bond is the only mechanism that’s big enough.
I can’t vote on May 5. I live in Florida now. But if I could, I’d vote yes. I’m asking Hopkins voters to do the same.
— Marcus Allen, M.Ed., MBA Hopkins Public Schools graduate Chief Financial Officer, Charlotte County Public Schools (FL)
