The roughly $24.3 billion education spending bill Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed into law Thursday includes $125 million in targeted grants for public schools in mostly districts represented by Democrats in the Legislature's majority party.
The money is paying for projects that would normally be funded through local property taxes, school district debt or their regular operating budget. Instead, the funding was provided directly from the state government to select districts and schools.
"Our record bipartisan education budget is going to make a real difference in the lives of our kids, in the events in our classrooms, in districts all across our state and campuses," Whitmer said at the bill signing Thursday in Suttons Bay in Leelanau County. "... Our goal is to help everyone to make it in Michigan by investing in education at every level.”
The more than two dozen spending measures tucked into the school aid budget include $1 million for a Novi schools wellness center, $3 million for a Waverly High School auditorium in the Lansing area, $500,000 for a pool at Eastpointe schools and $11.5 million for structural improvements at Detroit's Coleman A. Young Elementary School and a foreign language immersion and cultural studies school in Detroit.
Observers say the direct aid is a reflection of the first annual budget passed by the new Democratic House and Senate majorities and an influx of one-time surplus tax revenue that couldn't be spent on long-term programs that would put a future strain on the state budget.
"We definitely don’t want to be in a situation where we do a big long-term increase that we have to claw back the next year," said state Rep. Regina Weiss, an Oak Park Democrat who helped shape the House's K-12 budget.
State Rep. Ann Bollin criticized the spending, arguing it wasted critical funds on "pointless programs and pork" rather than addressing the state's most pressing education needs. She noted the Novi wellness center funded through the grant would include a "zen zone" for teachers to exercise and destress.
“Rather than helping students catch up on learning lost during the pandemic or helping young children learn to read, the budget sets aside $10 million to teach high school students how to fill out forms and funds pools, auditoriums and TV programming," the Brighton Township Republican said in a statement.
When present in the larger, general omnibus budget, the targeted grants are sometimes referred to as pet projects or pork barrel spending used to reward or win over voters in districts of certain legislators. The process has come under scrutiny in recent years as the amount of pet project funding has increased — including in the K-12 budget — and transparency around the process has been lacking.
Among the projects that received funding, several were located in the districts of the House and Senate Democratic appropriations chairs: Sen. Sarah Anthony of Lansing and Rep. Angela Witwer of Delta Township. Those projects include the Waverly High School auditorium, a Lansing track and a Lansing career and technical education center.
Some school districts this year left out of the targeted education grants expressed discomfort with the use of the K-12 budget to reward certain schools in Democratic districts.
"In the end, how does a track or an auditorium or a new high school roof benefit kids in Marysville when it's being given to a different community?" asked Marysville Superintendent Shawn Wightman.
"How is it that one school district is more deserving than another? They’re all students of the state of Michigan.”
But lawmakers have pointed to other long-term investments that headlined the K-12 budget as proof that the overall spending plan will bring widespread transformation more evenly among Michigan's 1.5 million school children.
The budget includes a per-pupil funding increase from $9,150 to $9,608, a $205 million increase in at-risk funding and an increase in special education funding of about $310.3 million for a total of $2.2 billion, or full funding for special education, in the next fiscal year. The budget will provide free school lunch and breakfast for all PreK-12 students and increases funding for English language learners by $13.3 million.
"Overall, it’s a strong budget," said Robert McCann, executive director for the K-12 Alliance of Michigan, a school advocacy group. "We’ve advocated for years that we need to stop looking past the per-pupil number. The costs schools encounter go far beyond the per-pupil costs.”
School pet projects
In addition to the Novi schools wellness center and the high school auditorium in suburban Lansing, the budget features millions of dollars more for specific school projects.
Lawmakers allocated $4 million for a high school's roof in the Godfrey Lee School District in Wyoming in suburban Grand Rapids, $6 million for a career and technical education center in the Ingham Intermediate School District, and $500,000 for driver education training in Wayne-Westland and Dearborn schools.
Other grants include $2 million for Hamtramck schools to hire and train accelerated learning coaches, $1.25 million for an early childhood center for Lake Shore Public Schools in St. Clair Shores, $10.7 million for the Huron School District in New Boston to support a Downriver Career and Technical Education Consortium and $500,000 for a track at Hill Center in Lansing.
The Clinton County Regional Educational Service Agency, the mid-Michigan county's intermediate school district, will receive a total of about $68 million for two pilot programs.
One before- and after-school program line item provides $50 million to Clinton County RESA and creates an advisory committee to recommend similar programs to the Michigan Department of Education. At certain points in the budget-making process, the program was suggested for broader deployment across the state.
The budget blueprint contains another $18 million grant for the Clinton County RESA to create a 3-year pilot preschool program for 3-year-olds. Of the five state lawmakers who represent some part of Clinton County, three are Democrats: Reps. Emily Dievendorf of Lansing and Penelope Tsernoglou of East Lansing and Sen. Sam Singh of East Lansing.
Another line item provides $500,000 in ongoing annual funding to Grosse Ile School District, referring to the island-based district as "an isolated school district." The targeted grant sidesteps a separate isolated district funding formula where the money is allocated based on size and pupils per square mile because Grosse Ile wouldn't qualify under that formula. Freshman Democratic Rep. Jaime Churches of Wyandotte represents Grosse Ile and was previously an elementary teacher in the school district before being elected to the House last year.
The general omnibus budget, which is expected to be signed in the coming weeks, contains a $40 million grant for the Michigan School for the Deaf to build a dormitory. The school is located in Flint.
'I understand that frustration'
Education advocates typically don't want to see "winners and losers" emerge from the K-12 budget through targeted grants like the ones authorized this year, McCann said. But with the confluence of abundant one-time funding and the fact that Democrats had full control of the budget-making process for the first time in 40 years, "I get why it happened," McCann said.
"I understand that frustration," he said of school districts that didn't receive targeted grants. "I do think it’s a unique circumstance we’re in.”
Weiss argued urban school districts — like the ones receiving direct appropriations this year — have been historically underfunded and don't have the same economic means to levy a millage to pay for facility upgrades.
Wightman questioned that logic by noting the $1 million grant for a wellness center in Novi, a more affluent community than the average Michigan school district (the median annual household income in Novi is $100,311 compared to $59,504 in Marysville in St. Clair County, according to Census data). He argued each district should have the opportunity to compete for grant money.
"Why not bundle that money and put it in an area where everyone can bid on it?” Wightman said.
While the number of pet projects in the education budget is more than in years past, there is a recent precedent for targeted grants for specific school districts. Last year, then-Republican House Speaker Jason Wentworth of Farwell sponsored a $15 million grant in the general omnibus for a career and technical education facility in the intermediate school district in Clare and Gladwin counties.
While the one-time funding may have benefited some districts' capital plans, Weiss noted a more permanent and equitable solution was needed to pay for the upkeep of the state's education infrastructure.
A study funded in last year's budget is expected to be complete next year and provide a clearer picture of the needs of each school building in the state.
One-time programs, savings deposits
The budget also features a few one-time and continued programs tailored toward teachers, including a $225 million student loan repayment program for teachers. The program would pay up to $200 a month, or less if a teacher's loan payment is less, or up to $400 a month for teachers working in a district where 85% of students are considered economically disadvantaged.
Another $63.8 million will be distributed to increase educator compensation, $50 million over five years will be used for a teacher mentor program and $15 million will be used for a rural educator credentialing hub pilot.
The budget continues some targeted spending from past years, including a $25 million allocation to offset tuition costs for prospective teachers and $50 million for stipends for student teachers.
The investment in teachers is long overdue and is a sign of continuing support for the profession, said Sen. Darrin Camilleri, the Trenton Democrat who helped shape the K-12 budget.
"Michigan will be the best place in the country to be a teacher," Camilleri said at the Suttons Bay bill signing Thursday.
Other programs receiving one-time funding include $3 million for gun detection software Zero Eyes, $2 million for a Detroit neighborhood tutoring program and $6 million for a pilot program to teach "diverse American histories" and local history.
The budget also makes several deposits into the teacher retirement program and newly created rainy day funds specific to education, including $450 million into a School Aid Rainy Day Fund, $314 million into an enrollment stabilization fund, $245 million into a school meals reserve fund, and $200 million into a Great Start Readiness Program reserve fund.
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(Staff Writer Craig Mauger contributed.)
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