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 Study:
New Schools Costing Taxpayers
MIRS, February 23, 2004
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The Michigan
Land Use Institute is set to release a new report Tuesday that
shows the statewide trend to unnecessarily close older urban
schools for brand-new facilities in underdeveloped areas has
cost taxpayers billions of dollars since 1994.
The report urges Superintendent Tom WATKINS and the Legislature
to adopt policies that encourage school districts to basically
renovate their old buildings as opposed to constructing new
edifices in former cornfields.
Called "Hard Lessons" Causes and Consequences of Michigan's
School Construction Boom" is the product of a year of research,
travel and interviews throughout the state and is being billed
as the first detailed assessment of how school construction
decisions are made in Michigan.
It concludes that school construction is raising property taxes
and is threatening the long-term economic and community
stability of neighborhoods. Instead of sticking these schools in
empty fields, districts should work closer with local land use
bodies and make renovation a top priority. The state should
provide financial incentives for schools to build in not build
out, according to the report.
Why bother? The report said new school construction is
"dramatically raising property taxes" and tripled related debt
from $4 billion to $12 billion since 1994. And since 1996,
school districts built 500 new schools in Michigan and closed
278 older ones, but the school population grew only 4.5 percent.
The biggest violators came from school districts in Southeast
Michigan, according to the report. Even though the number of
kids attending school in the area is predicted to go down 1.5
percent in the next 30 years, spending for school expansion
projects has totaled $6.2 billion.
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