Action alerts

Rather than early warning of a nuclear strike, a package of bills now before the Michigan Senate aim to give early warning of a school district in financial distress - a "deficit early warning" system, if you will. But if our lawmakers truly want an early warning, they should simply ask the parents, teachers and staff of our schools what they have been forced to do by Michigan's persistent failure to invest in public education.

These bills escalate the penalties for districts in financial difficulty - and layer on reporting requirements that seem primarily aimed at placing blame on the locals - while completely failing to acknowledge that districts might be in distress because of the actions of the Legislature. The bill package continues the neat shift of blame: the Legislature and Governor make the decisions about school funding, but the responsibility for cutting programs and opportunities available to our children is left for local school boards to shoulder.

At base, there are two competing stories about what is happening to our schools, and one of them is driving these bills forward.

Just a few days ago, a group of Democratic state lawmakers announced that they would introduce legislation to put a hold on the creation of new charter schools until the state developed a better system to oversee their finances. The draft bill, of course, was a reaction to the stunning investigative work by the Detroit Free Press in their June expose on the questionable financial dealings of private, for-profit charter schools in Michigan. (If you haven't read it, you really should.)

Now, as the minority party in both houses of the legislature, there is essentially zero chance that this Democratic bill would be passed as-is. It's an election year, when you tend to see a lot of this kind of thing. But they were also trying to make a point. Part of that point is to say that the people of Michigan want to make sure that public funds which are intended to educate our children are not siphoned off to line some private contractor's pockets.

Now that the state budget process is in its final stages, a final School Aid budget is only days away. There will be very little time to discuss it once it's made public, so it's important for parents to weigh in now.

Contact your state lawmakers today!

While we don't know what the proposal will look like, we do have the different versions proposed by the Governor and passed by the House and Senate. What we find there does not make us very optimistic.

• Virtually all the Governor's advertised "$150 million" increase in student funding comes from money that will be left over from this year because there were fewer students than expected. This is true of the other versions, also.
• Under the Senate and House plans, charter schools receive significantly larger increases, on average, than local school districts. In fact, the Senate plan would give charters almost $100 per pupil more on average.
• Under the Senate plan, 340,000 students, including 110,000 living in poverty, would get the lowest possible increases in funding.
• Most districts would fail to keep up with inflation under any of these plans. The Senate plan is again the most extreme: over half a million students (almost half of them living in poverty) would not have their funding keep up with inflation.

To top it all off, predictions for revenues next year are lower than they were when these plans were written. That can't be good news.

>>>>Click below to read more!

Once again, we are asking for your help. Our state is on the verge of compounding a terrible mistake by making it even bigger. As you might guess, I'm referring to the so-called Education Achievement Authority, an agency engineered by the Governor and billionaire donors to take over struggling schools and wave a magic wand over them. It started with 15 schools in Detroit, and the Legislature is nearing a vote on whether to take it to the "big time" state wide.

Only we're too old to believe in magic, and the EAA's work in Detroit has been a disaster rather than a miracle. This experiment should be ended, for the sake of the children in those schools. We should not base our state's entire program for helping struggling schools on a failed experiment that many call "educational malpractice." There are real alternatives, which can produce constructive change. Our "Parent Proposal" is just such an alternative, and there is now pending legislation which would take our state in a better direction.

Time to stop playing games with school funding - budget options range from bad to worse

Let's play

Fibbing or Funding

The only game show where your school always gets less than your children deserve!

Click here to read more >>>?

Well, it's back. Last Tuesday afternoon, Rep. Lisa Lyons introduced the new version of the "EAA bill" - that is, a bill which would make the Educational Achievement Authority a permanent state school district and expand its authority greatly. Rep. Lyons (R-Alto), who also chairs the House Education committee, then scheduled hearings on the bill (HB 4369) for the following day. As a result, those of us who hoped to speak up about the bill had less than 24 hours to read the 60 page document and draft our reactions.

But many of us, including MIPFS, did just that; I was fortunate to be able to actually testify on behalf of parent advocates across the state.

But why should all Michigan parents be concerned about the EAA? After all, it's only for those "failing" schools, right?

I think there are two important reasons.

1. If you think this won't affect you, think again. Expanding the EAA is a central part of a larger effort to undermine local public schools, as we saw last fall.
2. Most importantly, how can any of us stand by while state takeover, untested technology-driven "teaching" methods, and a laser-like focus on test scores are forced onto anybody's children?

Click here to read more and take action! >>>>

• School Aid Budget - Magical numbers from the CPA-in-chief
• EAA - We know how to turn schools around. Trust us.
• A la carte school funding proposal not so popular on the menu
• A parents' vision for public education

FLASH - The pressure is working! Help stop the EAA "state takeover" bill in committee!

Friends,
To all of you who have sent messages regarding HB 6004 - the EAA or "state takeover" bill: Thank You!!
For those of you who haven't yet had a chance to contact your State Representative, the time is NOW.

Call House Education Committee members TODAY!

Click below to read the latest alert!