Significant Cuts Across the Board

2009-10 School Aid Budget Gets Senate Committee Nod
Significant Cuts Across the Board
[MI Association of School Boards - Capitol News]

The Senate Appropriations Committee passed House Bill 4447 to the Senate floor with $410 million in cuts to schools for this fall. These cuts include a $110 per pupil cut for all districts in the state amounting to $174 million for 2009-10. The additional cuts are coming from categorical funding with a complete elimination of early childhood funding. Here are most of the categorical cuts:

- Michigan School Readiness grants $103.5 million
- ISD special ed and voc ed equalization $45.9 million
- Declining enrollment $30.6 million
- At-risk funding for Dearborn $5.9 million
- ISD early childhood money $5 million
- District specific grants $2.4 million
- Section 81 for ISDs $4.1 million
- CEPI $1.5 million
- Michigan Virtual High School $2.3 million

As reported earlier by MASB, this bill will also delete all intent language related to developmental kindergarten programs and full day kindergarten in recognition of the financial hardships these requirements would have caused districts.

The other major language change in the bill was related to days and hours of instruction. In 2010-11 schools will be required to have at least 165 days of instruction with an increase to 170 days for the 2012-13 school year. The language also states that a district can't reduce days below where they were in 2008-09. MASB has a move back to more days as one of its legislative priorities; however, we think legislators should have went beyond what's in this bill and we lost an important piece that would have required a school day to have five hours to be counted. This would have eliminated all the half days that schools have historically had and which many have gotten rid of in recent years.

The school community fully understood that cuts would happen in the upcoming school year, but how the cuts are being done should be questioned. Although they spend all of the remaining federal stimulus dollars, this budget finishes with a $230 million surplus in the school aid fund. It's understandable that some money be set aside based on the poor revenue projections we've seen in the past, but this seems to be more than needed.

The bill will likely pass the full Senate and be assigned to a conference committee to work out the differences between the House and Senate. There was initial talk to have the school aid bill completed before the two-week July 4 break, but that seems unlikely now. The final version, whenever it's finished, will likely be much different that what passed today, but what won't change are the significant cuts for schools this fall, even with the federal stimulus dollars.