Granholm: School Funding Won’t Be Cut (MI)
June 28, 2010
Two top Garden City school officials aren’t holding their breath about news that there wi ll be no cuts to school funding next year.
In her two years as Garden City Schools superintendent, Michelle Cline said that she has grown wary of talk that doesn’t result in money.
“I will believe it when I see the money,” Cline said Friday. “I have a lack of trust in state government. In the meantime, we will proceed with our budget plans.”
That means a potential $2 million in cuts in the district’s $47 million budget in 2010-11.
Cline and other superintendents have listened intently to the news while in East Lansing last week.
Garden City Schools board President Patrick McNally is skeptical, also.
McNally said Friday, that he had not yet heard “the good news.”
“That’s fantastic if it is true,” McNally said. “We can make some progress toward eliminating the deficit.”
The district had feared a possible $268 cut in per-pupil funding.
Good news came from Gov. Jennifer Granholm on Thursday that the state will not make that cut. In fact, the governor said, school districts may even get “a very small” increase.
Granholm, speaking at a meeting of the Plymouth A.M. Rotary Club at downtown Plymouth’s Fiamma Grille, said legislators had “agreed” to hold school districts harmless as they decided what to do about an unexpected surplus in the state’s school aid fund.
“There will definitely not be a foundation cut,” Granholm said. “We have proposed holding education harmless, and there’s agreement in both the House and Senate.”
Granholm did say that some of the surplus in the school aid fund could be diverted to colleges and universities, if legislators can do it without hurting local school districts.
“What happens between now and October may not hold true for the entire year,” Cline said, adding she wondered whether any deal would hold.
Granholm said she expects the deal to be done by July 1. She also said that she supports an amendment to the state Constitution calling for the budget to be done annually by July 1 and said the governor and state legislators should have their pay docked for every day after that until the budget is done.
School districts have often complained that their budgets must be adopted and start July 1, before the state adopts its budget. For planning purposes, at least, districts need to know what the numbers will be.
Cline had urged residents to flood state lawmakers with letters protesting a plan that would explore using school aid surplus money to offset the state’s general fund deficit.
“Using state aid dollars to offset the state’s general fund deficit will continue to put our children’s education at risk,” Cline said earlier this month.