Harold C. Ford
There were no surprises at the annual organizational meeting of the Flint Board of Education (FBOE) on Jan. 21, 2026. The four executive officers that presided over the FBOE in 2025 will continue in their leadership roles into 2026.
Joyce Ellis-McNeal and Laura MacIntyre – the two most senior members of the Flint panel – were returned to their positions of president and vice president, respectively.
Ellis-McNeal was nominated for the presidency by FBOE Trustee Terae King, Jr., and King, Jr. was nominated by Trustee Melody Relerford for the same position. Ellis-McNeal then received the votes of all seven FBOE members, including Trustees Claudia Perkins, Linda Boose, and Dylan Luna.
MacIntyre was nominated for the vice presidency by Luna, and Relerford nominated King, Jr. MacIntyre received six of seven votes as Relerford cast her vote for King, Jr.
Perkins, after nomination by King, Jr., was returned to the secretary position with a unanimous 7-0 vote.
Luna, after nomination by MacIntyre, was returned to the treasurer position on a 6-1 vote. (King, Jr. received the nomination and vote of Relerford.)
Boose was unanimously voted into the assistant secretary-treasurer position after nomination by MacIntyre.
FBOE terms ending this year
Board President Ellis-McNeal and Vice President MacIntyre have evolved into senior leadership status on the Flint board since taking their seats back in 2021.
Both were elected to six-year terms in the November 2020 election in which Ellis-McNeal received 9.13 percent of the votes cast and MacIntyre garnered 6.10 percent. Ellis-McNeal and MacIntyre will therefore conclude their terms at the end of this calendar year along with King Jr., as he won a partial-term seat in the November 2022 election with 53.29% of the vote. Presumably, all three will decide if they’d like to seek re-election before their terms are up.
Having taken their seats following the November 2022 election, Luna, Relerford, and Perkins will not face re-election, should they wish to pursue it, until November 2028.
Boose, who was picked by the Board to fill a vacancy in March 2022 and then won her seat in the November 2024 election with 71.5 percent of votes cast, will not see her term end until 2030.
Five years in: some progress amid familiar challenges
Given five-years of leadership from Ellis-McNeal and MacIntyre complete, this veteran education beat writer felt compelled to consider five points of progress and five ongoing challenges the pair have presided over during their tenure on the FBOE thus far.
Points of progress
- Overcoming two health crises: FCS leadership completed the task of navigating successfully through two major health crises — the Flint water crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic. New water supply infrastructure, temporary, alternative sources of water, masking, social distancing, pausing instruction, and remote learning were some of the measures adopted to meet the challenge(s).
- Successful settlement of labor contracts, notably with the United Teachers of Flint in April 2024.
- COVID-relief funds: the distrcit spent all of the approximately $156.7 million in COVID-19 relief funds made available to FCS via eight waves of grants from federal and state governments. Most of the funds were spent on renovation projects in Flint’s 11 school buildings while a lesser, but substantial, portion was spent on academics.
- Stabilizing the superintendency: Kevelin Jones secured his superintendency when he inked a five-year contract in June 2024. The move was meant to provide stability to the district’s top leadership position. In November 2021, Jones had become the district’s eighth superintendent in 16 years.
- Brownell-Holmes campus upgrade: In 2025, FCS opened its first new school building in decades – a 5,000-square-foot structure dubbed The Cube @ Brownell-Holmes. The CUBE is also intended to serve as a “community hub for after-school programming, enrichment, and neighborhood engagement.”
Other good-news stories in the past 5 years include: significant steps toward a rebuild at the Central-Whittier campus – closed since summer 2009 – and a possible opening date in the fall of 2028; and, within the last couple of years, greater civility between FBOE members that had often been moved to dysfunction by personal and even physical attacks, parliamentary disorder, and long meetings.
Familiar challenges
- Ongoing loss of students: FCS student enrollment has fallen to 2,605 students, making Flint the eighth largest of Genesee County’s public-school districts. It was estimated by EVM in 2024 that 80 percent of Flint’s school-age children do not attend FCS, taking with them over $100 million in state aid annually.
- Continuing financial instability: In 2014, the financial profile of FCS rocketed into red numbers with a $20 million loan taken out by the district. At that time, the auditing firm of Plante Moran also informed the district that it was encumbered by a debt totaling $22 million. The bleak financial picture continues to this day, exacerbated by declining student enrollment and concomitant loss of state aid. In January 2024, FCS Superintendent Kevelin Jones asked Michigan lawmakers for help in addressing the district’s roughly $56.1 million debt and operational deficit of about $14.4 million.
- Low student scores on standardized tests: Spring 2025 testing of students found less than 10 percent math proficiency in eight FCS buildings. Three schools – Doyle Ryder (10.3%), Eisenhower (18.8%), and Neithercut (13.1%) were the only buildings reporting double-digit proficiency in English Language Arts. The scores prompted MacIntyre to remark, “Our students are failing.”
- Continuing deterioration of the Central-Whittier campus: While a plan to revitalize the sprawling, deteriorated Central-Whittier campus is taking shape, the exact contours of that plan remain elusive and disappointing to some of Flint’s citizenry. The earliest announced occupation date of the new campus by students is the fall of 2028 – a little over 19 years since the last class graduated from Central.
- Scuttling of the Flint Education Continuum (FEC): Revealed in April 2021 by EVM, FEC was a massive several hundred-million-dollar plan to rescue Flint’s public schools that involved three levels of government, several Flint-area nonprofits, and all three of Flint’s major institutions of higher learning. The plan was scuttled by disaffected FBOE members. It had called for a new high school and the rebuilding or refurbishing of all other FCS school buildings.
Some other challenges and setbacks have also included continuing attrition of full-time teachers and unusual methods of filling vacant instructional positions with long-term subs, not-fully-certified college graduates, and use of noncertified school personnel as substitute teachers.
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The FBOE is scheduled to meet: Feb. 18; March 11 and 18; April 8 and 15; May 13 and 20; and June 17. Meetings typically start at 6:30 p.m. and are broadcast on the district’s YouTube page. Visit the FCS website for meeting times and locations.
