The conservative education group Citizens for Better Education (CBE), which had held a 6–3 majority on the Ann Arbor school board since 1991, favored the city's traditional high schools and a "back-to-basics" educational approach. With student populations increasing dramatically in size at the traditional high schools, CBE board members questioned both the small size and higher per-pupil spending at CHS. They proposed expanding the school by 100-200 students, and equalizing its per-pupil expenditures with those at the city's larger schools. Proponents of alternative education countered that expanding the student body so drastically would destroy the school's intimate ethos, and that the higher per-pupil spending resulted from CHS offering many classroom places, uncompensated, to students from other high schools who commuted for one or two classes. However, their proposal for a new alternative school to take pressure off the existing high schools was quashed by the board's conservative majority.