Democrats make statewide call to fund education

Democratic legislators held a series of press conferences this week to call on Gov. Rick Snyder and House and Senate Republicans to restore state funding to public education.

Snyder’s budget has received heated criticism from every sector of Michigan. Many believe it was finalized too hastily, requires too many concessions from publicly funded institutions and favors corporations over citizens.

The education budget has been a hot-topic since the first indications of massive cuts came to a head earlier this year. With a projected $900 million dollar surplus in the School Aid Fund many legislators, school employees and community members believed education would be spared cuts in next year’s budget.

But the Republican-led legislature and Gov. Snyder voted to add college and university funding to the School Aid Fund, which was not originally intended, and ended up cutting $470 dollar per-pupil out of K-12 funding.

According to a press release from the Democratic party the diminishing funding will have the following effects on Michigan school districts:

Education cuts in the state budget will have a total impact of nearly $10.6 million for the Lansing School District, according to the Ingham Intermediate School District. They will also cost Holt Public Schools nearly $4 million; East Lansing Public Schools (ELPS) more than $1.9 million; Mason Public Schools more than $2.23 million; and Okemos Public Schools more than $2.3 million.

Even after the ink has dried on the budget bearing Snyder’s signature, Democratic legislators and community members have continued to voice outrage to the forced concessions. Democrats held press conferences in Grand Rapids, Dearborn, Lansing, Sterling Heights and Saginaw to address the issue.

“We’re here for one simple reason, we’re hear to stand up for our schools now that the K-12 budget has been signed,” said Rep. Brandon Dillon (D-Grand Rapids) at a neighborhood school in downtown Grand Rapids. “These are cuts that are going to impact classroom sizes, quality of our text books, cause layoffs and in general they’re going to diminish the quality of our children’s education.”

There were about 30 people at the press conference who showed up to show their support for K-12 funding, some of whom were brought to tears during the Representatives’ statements to the media.

“The reality is, these cuts were made only so the governor could finance an 82 percent tax cut for corporations,” said Dillon. “We understand that the governor wants to attract top-notch employers to Michigan but we fundamentally don’t believe that the only way to do that is to cut taxes and to leave our schools holding the bag, trying to figure out how they’re going to balance their budget.”

Dillon said employers are not going to want to move their businesses to Michigan if there is not a quality public education system in place.

Rep. Roy Schmidt (D-Grand Rapids) was also present at the Grand Rapids press conference and said that the Republican budget “is nuts” and is doing nothing but “screwing our kids”.

“You can do a lot of things, you can live with revenue sharing cuts that I don’t like. But don’t mess with the kids,” said Schmidt.

Schmidt said many legislators because of their lack of direct observations within the community do not understand what it is like to operate an urban school district like Grand Rapids Public Schools with such limited funding.

GRPS has lost $4.6 million dollars in funding this year and has planned to cut 136 employees, close four buildings and consolidate their adult education programs because of the budget shortfalls.

Despite the brutal cuts to public education, Dillon believes the budget disagreements can be solved through bipartisan means when the legislature breaks for the summer.

“We don’t believe we needed to make these cuts this year, we want to sit down with the governor, House and Senate Republicans over this legislative break and try to figure out how we can do what the thousands of people across the state have told us they want — to fully fund our schools,” Dillon said.

Dillon says there are funds within the state that could be used to help restore some of the categorical funding to public education. He said the House Appropriations Committee, last week, rejected an extra $12 million dollars that the governor had requested to help implement the corporate tax cuts. Dillon also said there is money laying around to fund a Republican primary but he believes they could move to a caucus system instead and send the money K-12′s way.

Democrats say they will continue to challenge the K-12 cuts and are frustrated by what they say is a Republican-led attack on public education that endangers future generations.

“Time and time again, Republican leaders have shown that they value corporations over our children,” said Rep. Mark Meadows (D-East Lansing) in a press release. “I’m calling on the Governor and Republican leaders to work with us to restore vital funding to education so that we don’t jeopardize the future of our kids and our state.”

“If there is one message here — we’re going to keep fighting,” said Rep. Schmidt. “It’s very frustrating to me to see us take money away that the good citizens have paid and decide that we want to change and take that money that is dedicated to schools and move it somewhere else.”