Speakers Say School Funding Needs to Have Higher Priority

April 1, 2010

Education funding is still being heavily debated in the Michigan legislature, with many parents and candidates puzzled by what’s going on and seeking soluti ons.

Members of the Northville Democratic Club had a Town Hall Meeting March 9 at the Northville Public Library, inviting three education experts to speak on this hot topic.

Speakers included Joan Wadsworth of Northville, former president and longtime member of the Northville Public Schools Board of Education and candidate for state senate; Anne Randall of Northville, representative, Legislative Action Network, Northville Parent Teacher Student Association; and Rep. Alma Wheeler Smith, of Salem Township, a state representative for the 54th district and candidate for governor.

Scott Craig, president of the Northville Democratic Club, who teaches in Birmingham, said, “Our schools are really in trouble right now, and it’s not just a Northville problem, it’s a statewide problem.” He said 21 teachers were recently laid off in Birmingham.

Wadsworth gave a snapshot of the last year in school funding for Northville. She said each student received $8,539, and there are about 7,000 students with a total budget of $65 million.

RECENT CUTS DRASTIC
Recent cuts dropped funding by $165 million, leaving Northville’s students with $486 less per student, totaling a cut of $3.4 million out of a $65-million local school budget.

This led to local cuts in food service and the early childhood program.

“We have not finished solving the (budget) problem for this year,” she said.

The next year’s school funding is expected to drop $260 per student, representing $7 million statewide, that equates to about a 10 percent cut.

“That is not good public policy period,” she said. “Comp anies (that might want to relocate to Northville) are looking at the quality of life and the quality of our schools. We’ve been cutting our (school) budget for a decade. It’s really sad.”

Wadsworth believes the state doesn’t set its budget in a timely fashion, leaving school districts guessing at how much they will receive.

“An on-time budget would be great,” she said.

She also said that the school board has talked about pooling employee health insurance costs, and that the state needs to help with a pension program for district employees.

“We have employees who are counting on health insurance, and we need a stable source of school funding,” Wadsworth said.

She believes spending so much time to balance the budget locally wastes time that could be used to solve other issues.

THE PRICE OF IGNORANCE
Randall, an attorney with a 17-year-old son at Northville High School, asked the audience, “What can parents do?” She said they needs to talk to their legislators, saying how wrong it is to continually cut school funding. Groups of parents occasionally travel to Lansing to stage protests of school funding cuts, with such a group just making the trip on March 10.

She believes not educating children properly often leads them into a life of crime.

“Seventy-five percent of prisoners are functionally illiterate,” Randall said. She said it costs a lot more to house people in prison than to fund a proper education.

Smith, who served on the South Lyon school board for eight years, said, “We have been cutting (school funding) since 2001. The state of Michigan is in b ad shape. We’re not funding what we need to be funding. We’ve lost $2 million from the general fund in the last five years.”

She has a three-prong approach to fixing the budget: reduce the tax rate from 6 percent to 5.5 percent but expand it to services, which would collect about $1.5 billion for the state; use a graduated income tax, which would result in a tax reduction for 80 percent of Michigan taxpayers and bring in about $2 billion to the state; and close tax loopholes, which would add about $3 billion to Michigan.

“We are providing about $34 billion dollars a year in tax incentives,” she said. “We are giving away almost as much revenue as we raise.”

She said many businesses, in turn, aren’t following through on their side of the deal, such as failing to meet employment requirements.

Smith said we would need to have a constitutional amendment to have a graduated income tax, but that Michigan is one of only seven states that has at “flat” income tax rate. With a graduated income tax, only the top 15 percent of wage earners would see a tax increase.

She also believes in the elimination of the business tax surcharge; the Michigan Promise program, which would provide financial aid to preschool and post-secondary students; and the creation of a School Aid Fund.

She complimented the Kalamazoo Promise program, a scholarship program open to all public school students in this Michigan city that pays 100 percent of tuition and mandatory fees for students who maintain a certain grade point average.

Smith said her overall tax plan would generate $6.5 billion a year for the state.

“We need to restructure our taxes,” Smith said. “It’s a proposal that will get Michigan moving again. We need a revenue structure in place that will provide the services that Michigan residents expect and deserve.”