I am writing today to announce the closure of the Michigan Messenger. After four years of operation in Michigan, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news into a single site, The American Independent at Americanindependent.com. This is part of a shift in strategy, towards new forms [...]
An abstinence-only presentation provided to numerous school districts in Calhoun and Eaton Counties in October of this year provided false and misleading information to students about HIV, experts allege.
Two county registers of deeds filed a class action lawsuit Monday on behalf of Michigan’s 83 counties alleging that the Mortgage Electronic Registration Services owes millions of dollars in property title transfer taxes.
Despite evidence of the impact of mercury on children and public health, Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette last month joined with 24 other state attorneys general in filing a lawsuit to scuttle new EPA regulations that would reduce mercury emissions from power plants.
Longtime Capitol reporter and commentator Peter Luke had a column on Wednesday that blistered the current crop of state legislators for their indecision and ineptness and raised the idea of extending the state sales tax to services as well as products. In particular, he regards a recent bill submitted by Rep. Mark Meadows (D-East Lansing) [...]
Tim Skubick has a post on his blog about Gov. Granholm’s latest move in an elaborate chess game to force the Republican-controlled Senate to vote for more revenue, something they have so far refused to do. And he rightly says that the outcome will be a measure of her power and that of the education [...]
The Michigan Board of Education unanimously approved a resolution urging Gov. Jennifer Granholm and the legislature to pass bills to raise more revenue and restore the cuts in K-12 funding. As currently written, the budget for the next fiscal year will include cuts of $292 per student for school districts around the state.
In her weekly radio address, Gov. Jennifer Granholm implored lawmakers to boost government revenue in order to restore deep cuts made in state funding for K-12 education, arguing that those cuts will cripple some school districts and force all schools to increase class size and reduce student choices. The governor said:
Gov. Jennifer Granholm on Thursday started the process that will almost certainly lead to even more cuts in per-pupil funding to public schools throughout the state unless the state legislature passes new revenue bills to replenish the School Aid Fund. The Detroit News reports:
After nearly three weeks of using a procedural trick to keep six budget bills already passed by both houses of the state legislature from being sent to Gov. Jennifer Granholm, Senate Majority Leader finally transmitted those bills to the governor’s desk for a signature or veto on Tuesday. Along with those bills, Bishop also sent [...]
Gov. Jennifer Granholm on Monday signed the K-12 school budget bill passed by the state legislature, but issued a statement while doing so indicating that she is unhappy with the deep cuts in per-pupil funding. She also used the line-item veto to strike out spending items worth $54 million and indicated that more cuts will [...]
The Michigan Association of School Boards did some numbers crunching based upon a new memo sent by Department of the Treasury to Gov. Jennifer Granholm and say it appears that K-12 schools could face budget cuts twice as deep as those in the current budget because of continuing shortfalls in predicted revenues each month.
The Detroit Free Press has put up a searchable database that allows people to see how much the budget cuts for K-12 education currently in the budget would affect their local school district. A couple quick examples: Haslett Public Schools looks to lose $457,000. Detroit Public Schools would lose just over $14 million.
Not everyone is happy with it, but there is a budget agreement in place to cover K-12 spending at the state level. As the budget process continues at a speed much faster than last year’s cliffhanger in September, the Senate reconvened Thursday after a weeks-long holiday to hammer out a plan to give Michigan’s public [...]
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