State House Approves Education Cuts

A Hartland school board member tweeted that Thursday's state House vote that cut funding for public schools, community colleges and universities for the budget year in October "a sad day for education."

"The supporters of this bill seem to think they're making the public sector to pay. But it's the students who will pay," Trustee Michelle Hutchinson also tweeted to an official with the Michigan Association of School Boards on Thursday night following the vote.

The House appoved the bill by a 57-53 vote in a plan that means districts would face a cut of at least $436 per student. It's more than a state Senate plan that would cut $340 per pupil, but less than Gov. Rick Snyder's proposed $470.

The two bills will now have to be reconciled before final passage. Snyder has set a goal of May 31 to complete the budget in which lawmakers are trying to close a $1.4 billion projected deficit.

Locally, state Reps. Cindy Denby and Bill Rogers, who represent Livingston County and areas that include the Hartland School District, voted for the bill.

Rogers, R-Brighton, said in a story published on mLive that local schools need to cutback similar to the rest of state government.

"People have demanded that our state get its spending in line and this includes school districts," he said in the story. "There is no correlation between the amount of money that we spend and student achievement.”

State House speaker Jase Bolger said in a statement that "Michigan's taxpayers can no longer afford to be as generous as they once were."

"We cut nearly $1.7 billion in spending out of the state budget, but still managed to keep the K-12 reductions to 3.5 percent per pupil, one of the smallest cuts in the entire state budget," the Marshall Republican's statement reads in part.

Republicans say the proposal is part of a larger effort to fix what's been a structural budget problem in the state that includes proposed tax cuts and other reforms designed to encourage economic growth. Democrats counter that the savings hurt students and the social safety net and say there's no evidence tax cuts will improve the economy.

Hutchinson said in an email to Hartland Patch that opponents of the cuts were hoping the house would wait for an upcoming report from the state House Fiscal Agency showing higher than expected revenues.

"It's suppose to come out next week showing that the state has already collected $500 million more than projected which would make these cuts not only unnecessary but may have been enough for a per pupil increase," she said.

Hartland officials, led by Superintendent Janet Sifferman, have been lobbying hard against the cuts, saying programs would be sliced and classroom size likely increased, although such measures likely would not happen next year.

That's because officials say employees were willing to cut their pay and benefits and because the district has been fiscally prudent, cutting $7 million over the last decade.

But Hartland schools has recently been the subject of an article by Michigan Capitol Confidential, which reported that the general fund budget increased from $36 million in 2003 to $47 million in 2010.

Sifferman said in the story that the costs would have been $54 million had officials not taken action.