Last September, I had to ask the parents, students and staff of my school district to trust me. Trust that we’d have the resources to support our students’ needs. Trust that the programs we’d planned all summer would actually be funded. Trust that the jobs we were starting our school year with were secure.
Yet, as I stood there, I wasn’t sure if I was right because, on that first day of school, the Michigan Legislature still hadn’t passed a school funding budget.
Despite a law mandating they do their jobs by July 1 every year, lawmakers chose to ignore it, play politics with the education of our kids and didn’t get the job done until October, more than six weeks into the school year. This is not how you run a state that claims to value education.
A new poll of Michigan voters confirms what those of us in education have known for years: the public is tired of the political games and lack of prioritization that leaves schools dealing with this mess year after year.
Consider the School Aid Fund, the constitutionally designated pot of tax dollars that voters were promised would be set aside solely to fund Michigan’s K-12 public schools. For the last 15 years, governors and legislatures from both parties have been quietly siphoning money out of that fund to pay for other priorities that were once covered by the General Fund.
In the current year alone, more than $1.3 billion in School Aid Fund dollars are going somewhere other than K-12 schools. In practical terms, that means every single classroom across Michigan is losing out on more than $900 per-pupil in funding, solely to make up for Lansing’s broken promises and mismanagement of the state’s General Fund.
When voters were told about this practice, 78%, representing an overwhelming, bipartisan majority, opposed it. In an era when we can’t agree on much of anything, nearly eight in 10 Michigan voters agree that money designated for public schools should actually go to public schools.
I wish I could say I’m surprised it took a poll to surface what seems obvious, but, after years of watching Lansing treat the School Aid Fund like a slush fund, nothing about this issue surprises me anymore.
What does surprise me, and should alarm every lawmaker, is the depth of voter frustration with how the Legislature handles the budget process itself. The poll found that 93% of voters support requiring the Legislature to pass the school budget by the existing July 1 statutory deadline.
Voters are fed up, and frankly, so are educators. After all, a missed deadline is more than just an inconvenience for school districts like mine, it directly impacts my ability to best serve our students. By July, we need to finalize staffing. Many districts had positions to fill for teachers, support staff, bus drivers, paraprofessionals and more, but lacked the budget certainty last year to make those commitments with certainty.
It’s no wonder, then, that more than 75% of voters said they’d support freezing legislator pay until the school budget is done should they miss their deadline once again this year. These aren’t radical positions. They’re common sense, and every school administrator in Michigan will tell you the same thing.
Beyond how late the budget was finalized last year, there’s also the question of how much funding it contained. For two consecutive years, Michigan’s public schools have gotten increases that fall below the rate of inflation. Politicians will take credit for “record investments,” but when the increase doesn’t keep pace with rising costs for energy, health care, transportation and supplies, it’s not an investment, it’s a cut dressed up in better language.
Voters understand this as well. The poll found that 83% support legislation requiring school funding to, at a minimum, keep up with inflation. This isn’t a partisan issue. It’s a math issue.
Perhaps most tellingly, when voters were asked to choose between funding K-12 schools and cutting property taxes, they chose schools by a 22-point margin. A majority also said investing in schools would do more to strengthen their local economy than property tax relief. Voters see what the data has long shown: strong public schools are the engine of a strong community. They attract families, support property values and build the workforce that employers need.
On issue after issue, voters are delivering a message to Lansing so clear that it shouldn’t require interpretation: fund our schools, do your job on time and stop breaking promises to Michigan’s children.
Alan Latosz is Superintendent of Algonac Community School District and President of the K-12 Alliance of Michigan.
This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: Michigan’s lawmakers need to listen to voters and prioritize schools | Opinion
Reporting by Alan Latosz / The Detroit News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
