Nancy Kaffer

Detroit Free Press Columnist

This time, it's really impossible to understand what's going on in Lansing.

As the Legislature's lame-duck session rolled on, word trickled out Thursday that Gov. Rick Snyder's office was pushing hard on a proposal to cut the state's School Aid Fund by a whopping $430 million, or $287 per pupil, over the course of the school year.

By Thursday afternoon, Ari Adler, a spokesman for Snyder, said that the governor would no longer push for the change during lame duck.

"While it's the right thing to do, this is not the right time to do it," Adler said, adding that he expects the proposal to surface again next year. "It's not going away."

That's too bad.

Making the change, a state budget office spokesman claimed, is a matter of fairness and flexibility: When the state collects tax revenue, it pays the School Aid Fund the 23% of tax revenue it is entitled to before deducting income tax refunds. In other words, schools get 23% of gross state tax revenues before the state corrects for tax overpayments. Snyder wants to change that, paying out refunds from the total revenue take before calculating schools' 23% — meaning school funding would become a percentage of net, not gross, revenues. Making this change, said Kurt Weiss, the budget office spokesman, gives the administration "more flexibility" to fund all of its spending priorities.

Weiss insisted that school districts shouldn't expect to see any cuts, because "continued revenue increases," will allow "increased support for school spending."

If this explanation seems sketchy, you're reading it correctly.

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"It sounds like a technical, not exciting bookkeeping change, but it amounts to a $430-million hit," said Peter Spadafore, associate executive director for government relations at the Michigan Association of School Administrators. "They're saying they're going to phase this in over two years, and that schools are going to be taken care of," but schools, he says, don't have much reason to trust in Snyder or the Legislature to make the School Aid Fund whole.

Snyder has pitched previous tax changes as a matter of fairness — like lowering tax on businesses, while raising them on individuals. Fairness in government it is important. But it's also important that government, you know, pay for the things it's supposed to do.

Michigan, in theory, should be working overtime to get its educational act together.

Report after report shows that we're slipping. Kids across the state are scoring poorly in basic subjects, whether they're in well-to-do communities or struggling ones. Failing schools aren't turning around. Funding is a perennial problem.

A report commissioned by the state to find out what the bare minimum Michigan schools should spend per student to achieve "adequate" results (their word, not mine) found that the state is underspending, by a lot.

And all of this has a cumulative impact on generations of children who'll grow up to run Michigan businesses and government, to attract (or repel) companies looking for access to a well-educated workforce, and — this is kind of a big deal, too — to comprise the electorate of the future.

So now Snyder wants to cut per-pupil funding even more?

At minimum, Snyder should pair any bill that would cut school funding with a clear, legislatively viable plan for how those dollars would be replaced — and identify how revenue growth is expected to fill a $430-million hole, particularly with the hefty bill for a roads package passed last year, widely believed to require significant cuts, set to come due in two short years.

Folks in Lansing say this change would be a hard sell for the Legislature. That shouldn't change next year.

The years ahead could see massive changes in Michigan's educational landscape: The closure of failing priority schools, the next steps in the tentative recovery of the new Detroit Public Schools Community District, which must be supported by state government. The continued proliferation of charter schools that draw funds from traditional public schools, but aren't subject to sufficient transparency or oversight. All set against the backdrop of an incoming President Donald Trump, who has pledged to divert federal dollars to funding school choice, and who'll find an able assistant in Betsy DeVos, his choice for Secretary of Education — in other words, more charters, more schools of choice, more vouchers, less oversight.

And, if this provision resurfaces, less money.

How would your school district fare, with $287 less to educate your child each year?

Wherever you live in this state — an affluent suburban district or cash-strapped Detroit — and whatever your political affiliation, you should be asking this question.