Legislature Fails to Meet July 1 School Aid Budget Deadline Again

As lawmakers ignored their legal responsibility to pass a School Aid Budget by July 1 again this year, they’ve left Michigan’s schools once again planning for the upcoming school year without knowing the resources they’ll have available to support their students’ success. In response, K-12 Alliance of Michigan’s Executive Director, Robert McCann, released the following statement:

"Educators are beyond tired of lawmakers pointing fingers and asking why our students' test scores aren't better, all while standing in the way of the tools that schools need to improve them.

By all accounts, the budget itself is essentially done. If so, then the only thing standing between our schools and the certainty they need is politics, the worst reason imaginable to leave every district in this state guessing about how many teachers they can hire, how many programs they can run, and how many students they can serve.

If the budget is done, then lawmakers, at a minimum, must tell schools what is in it. That would give superintendents and school boards the numbers they need to plan, build their budgets, hire their staff, and open their doors this fall with confidence instead of guesswork. Districts cannot put those decisions on hold until the politics and chaos inside the Capitol finally sort themselves out.

Our kids, and the educators who serve them, deserve leaders who take this as seriously as the public already does. Unfortunately, lawmakers have once again made it clear that they don't."