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 Debate
on K-12 Increase Bubbles as Panel OKs Budget
Gongwer News Service, June 15, 2005
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A bill
containing spending for several K-12 school programs cleared a
House committee Wednesday, but the real debate on the bill never
surfaced at the meeting.
Some House Republicans plan to propose a major amendment to the
bill that would dramatically alter how a per pupil increase to
school districts would be distributed. As approved by the House
and Senate Appropriations committees and recommended by Governor
Jennifer Granholm, all 550 districts would receive a $175 per
pupil increase.
But Rep. Tim Moore (R-Farwell), with support from Rep. Chris
Ward (R-Brighton), the House majority floor leader, is
circulating an amendment he might propose on the House floor to
provide a bigger increase to lower-funded districts and a
smaller increase to higher-funded ones.
Under Mr. Moore's plan, every district would receive an $88 per
pupil increase. Districts whose foundation grant for basic
school operations would be below $7,200 would receive additional
funding of up to $155 per pupil, but only enough to get them to
the $7,200 level. About 130 of the 550 districts would receive
the minimum $88 increase and would be ineligible for the
additional money.
The current minimum foundation grant is $6,700.
Mr. Moore could not be reached for comment late Wednesday, but
Mr. Ward said he is hopeful that a vote will be held. No
decision has been made on whether to allow the proposal to
receive a vote when the bill comes up sometime next week, Mr.
Ward said.
Mr. Ward said, on paper, supporters of the proposal would have
enough legislators whose school districts would benefit to pass
it. "I'm not sure if it would pass or not, but I think at the
very least we want to see the discussion and dialogue about
greater equity move forward," he said.
The lawmaker noted that the Brighton Area Schools recently
decided to discontinue all bus service. Although the wealthier
districts also face issues, they are much less severe, he said.
"Since we have new money on the table this year, it seems to be
an appropriate time to talk about creating more equity in how
our schools are funded, closing the gap between the
highest-funded and lowest-funded districts in the state," he
said.
Mr. Ward said Rep. Matt Gillard (D-Alpena) is trying to find
votes in his party's caucus for the plan.
Whether the proposal can pass the House is unclear. Rep. John
Moolenaar (R-Midland), chair of the Appropriations Subcommittee
on K-12 School Aid, said he opposes it, preferring an equal
increase for all districts.
"As soon as you start trying to divide one district vs. another
district, those kind of proposals lose support very quickly," he
said.
But it could be expected to garner significant support from
legislators outside of the three major Metro Detroit counties of
Macomb, Oakland and Wayne, whose legislators would largely
oppose the concept.
The three counties have the bulk of the school districts that
would receive only the $88 per pupil increase, but just 45 of
the House's 110 districts are in these three counties.
Greg Bird, spokesperson for the State Budget Office, said he
could not comment on the proposal without having more detail.
As for the activity that did take place Wednesday on the K-12
bill, the House Appropriations Committee swiftly dumped a
subcommittee proposal to penalize school districts that count
illegal immigrants in their student population. Shortly after
the subcommittee approved the bill Tuesday with the language on
illegal immigrants, word spread that the U.S. Supreme Court had
ruled in 1982 that such efforts to block education for children
of illegal immigrants violate the Fourteenth Amendment to the
Constitution that promises "equal protection."
Rep. Glenn Steil Jr. (R-Cascade), the proposal's sponsor,
ruminated at the committee meeting in offering an amendment to
strike his idea from the bill, "Because of the wimpy Supreme
Court, we can't do this."
That drew chuckles from some in the room. But Democrats were
still fuming over the proposal, and Mr. Steil's comment only
agitated them.
"To discriminate against kids and to express such disdain for
our judiciary, I have no respect for that," said Rep. Gretchen
Whitmer (D-East Lansing).
Rep. Jim Plakas (D-Garden City), who said he is a
first-generation U.S. citizen, was still reeling from the
proposal surfacing at all. "I hope to God I never see anything
like this again," he said. "I could vomit."
Mr. Steil reiterated that the state simply lacks the funds to
educate children here illegally.
The committee then approved the overall bill with no other major
changes from what was in the subcommittee version (See Gongwer
Michigan Report, June 14, 2005).
For 2005-06, the budget contains $12.783 billion ($96.4 million
general fund). These numbers include funding for basic K-12
operations placed into the omnibus budget bill. The 2005-06
figures would be a 2.6 percent increase from the current year
(41.7 percent reduction general fund).
Ms. Granholm proposed spending $12.789 billion ($20.2 million
general fund).
Vote Planned This Month on Student Safety
Bills
Gongwer News Service, June 15, 2005
House Education Committee Chair Brian Palmer (R-Romeo) said
Wednesday he plans to vote before the end of the month on bills
that are part of a Republican package designed to keep sex
offenders and other offenders out of and away from schools and
day care centers. The comments came at the end of a hearing on
seven of the 14 bills in the package.
The package tightens reporting requirements so education
officials are made aware of criminal behavior by teachers and
other employees, imposes a self-reporting requirement on
teachers and surrounds schools with a 1,000-foot zone in which
sexual offenders are barred from living and loitering. Current
law requires prosecutors to notify the Department of Education
of the conviction of teachers of sexual offenses and other
crimes.
The package, some of which will be considered by the House
Judiciary Committee, requires notification at the time criminal
charges are filed.
Among the issues the committee was asked to consider:
· Does the package require an offender to move out of the safety
zone following conviction;
· The impact on teens convicted of having sex with underaged
persons when they later seek involvement as parents in school
functions;
· The potential damage to spouses in contentious child custody
proceedings who are falsely accused of molesting their children;
and
· The absence of designated officials to contact when a teacher
is required to report being charged with an offense that would
affect his or her employment.
The approach was criticized as "lazy legislation" by George
Kleinert of Detroit who said his son as a registered sex
offender as a result of having sex as a teen and who would be
unjustly affected. Asking legislators to target the legislation
to those who are truly dangerous, he said, "Don't take away the
rights of people who have already paid their debt to society."
The bills before the Education Committee are HB 4928, HB 4929,
HB 4930, HB 4931, HB 4932 and HB 4933.
S&P Stumping to Expand School Benchmarking
Gongwer News Service, June 13, 2005
The State Board of Education will get its chance Tuesday to hear
about a program linking poor-performing schools with their
better-performing counterparts, one that Standard & Poor's hopes
will become annual.
The Michigan Benchmarking Institute, part of the school data
analysis contract between S&P and that state, teaches principals
and teachers at the state's struggling schools how to accurately
compare themselves with other schools and then how to work with
better-performing schools to find programs that will help them
improve.
Michael Stewart, director of S&P's Performance Evaluation
Services, told Gongwer News Service on Monday that the company
has used the state's data to point out both those schools that
would benefit from the program as well as those that could serve
as mentors.
Only about two dozen schools have been through the institutes so
far, but Mr. Stewart said that was in part because there was
only time this spring for the two planned pilots. S&P conducted
programs for the Wayne Regional Educational Service Agency and
Saginaw Intermediate School District, but did not have time to
put together two additional programs requested by the Department
of Education before school began winding down for the year.
But those schools have choices of as many as 88 others,
depending on the subject and grade, from which to seek
assistance as benchmark schools.
The key to the program, Mr. Stewart said, was to match schools
with others that were demographically similar to ensure the
programs would be targeted to the population in the struggling
school. "We didn't want schools in Detroit and Flint to match up
with schools in the Upper Peninsula," he said.
Mr. Stewart said the program also is designed to make it
comfortable for teachers and principals from the struggling
schools to contact their better-performing peers to seek
assistance. "It's very much a teacher-to-teacher model," he
said. "It isn't about pitting one school against another."
The schools that went through the institutes this spring are
expected to begin calling the three benchmark schools by this
fall to ask about the programs at those schools. "As they get
answers to questions, they begin to uncover promising
practices," Mr. Stewart said.
S&P plans to post those "promising practices" to a website that
would be accessible to all school leaders.
And in the long run, Mr. Stewart said the company hopes to see
the full program open to more schools. The plan for the fall is
to conduct several regional institutes, but how many would
depend on the funding available for the program, he said. "We
would like this to become an annual exchange," he said.
And he said that exchange would not necessarily have to involve
S&P. Education department officials attended the two pilot
institutes, and he said S&P was willing to train them how to
conduct the programs.
But whoever runs the programs, Mr. Stewart said there would have
to be some financial commitment by the state. In addition to
paying S&P for the program, one part of a $500,000 contract for
school evaluation services, the Department of Education also
provided grants to the schools attending the institutes to cover
the costs of substitute teachers and other needs so school staff
could attend.
The state now needs to pay attention to those schools singled
out for high performance. "We've talked to the Department of
Education about an incentive for the higher performing
districts," he said. "If they get a lot of calls, they may have
to designate someone to handle it." He said state grants could
help districts cover the costs related to helping their peers
improve.
S&P could still be looking at ongoing revenue from the program
by expanding it to additional states. Mr. Stewart said officials
with the Pennsylvania State Education Association and the
Pennsylvania Superintendents Association had asked for a
presentation on the Benchmarking Institute that will also be
attended by officials from Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, New
York and Ohio.
Pennsylvania was also the second state for which S&P set up the
School Evaluation Services website with analysis of school
district performance.
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