By Zachary Gorchow
President of Michigan Operations
Posted: July 8, 2021 4:14 PM

There's been a lot of celebrating in the past week about the 2021-22 fiscal year budget for the state's K-12 public schools, and understandably so.

The long-sought goal of eliminating the gap between those districts funded at the minimum level per pupil and the basic level will be eliminated under the budget Governor Gretchen Whitmer is expected to sign next week.

This was the goal of Proposal A of 1994, to end the gap between the basic and the minimum level. Technically, the goal at that time was not – as some have said – to equalize state funding per pupil. That only became the goal in the late 2000s when the Legislature and Governor Jennifer Granholm consolidated the three funding tiers under by Proposal A – minimum, basic and maximum – and set the basic level the same as the maximum.

It's a massive achievement.

However, it does not – as many, including Governor Gretchen Whitmer, have described – bring equalization of per pupil funding.

On Wednesday, while signing a historic $4.4 billion supplemental K-12 appropriation for the current 2020-21 fiscal year, Ms. Whitmer, referring to the full-year budget, told those gathered for a news conference they would no longer be seeing wide disparities in per pupil funding.

It is true that every district will now receive a basic foundation allowance from the state of $8,700 per pupil.

But there are still 43 of the state's more than 500 traditional public school districts that will have more per pupil to spend in their basic amount per student because of a provision written into Proposal A to assure that communities with higher property values didn't erupt in protest and oppose Proposal A.

These were communities – Birmingham, Bloomfield Township, Bloomfield Hills, Farmington, Farmington Hills, part of Madison Heights, Southfield, Troy, Royal Oak, West Bloomfield, the Grosse Pointes, among others – where voters had long ago approved higher property taxes to pay for schools. Of the 43, 24 make use of this provision with the other 19 getting to spend more per pupil because of various carve-outs in Proposal A that I will not get into here.

These 24 were the communities highlighted in the leadup to Proposal A of 1994 about how they were then getting about $10,000 per pupil while many others in the state were getting something in the $3,000 per pupil range.

As a tradeoff to avoid having a key voting bloc revolt at Proposal A, they were designated "hold harmless" districts, meaning they would be held harmless from Proposal A and allowed to continue levying the taxes locally to bring them to the foundation allowance they had at that time.

For 2021-22, Bloomfield Hills will get $12,535 per pupil, Birmingham $12,455, Southfield $11,502, Lamphere $10,960, Farmington $10,576, Grosse Pointe $10,395, Center Line $10,034, Ann Arbor $9,701, Troy $9,486, Royal Oak $9,289 and West Bloomfield $9,327, among many others, including several in different parts of the state.

The distinction is important for a couple reasons. Parents of students in most districts could be excused for thinking based on the litany of press statements from elected officials in both parties for thinking their student would now be funded the same as those in the Bloomfield Hills Schools.

In fact, there's still a long ways to go before true equity in per pupil funding has been reached in Michigan.

The other reason it's important is that administrators, teachers and students in the hold harmless districts have been coping with tiny increases for years while their lower-funded brethren got twice as big an increase in raw dollars (and substantially more in percentage terms).

The $171 per pupil increase Bloomfield Hills Schools will receive for 2021-22 is a 1.4 percent increase, below the rate of inflation. That's largely been the case for that district for the past decade.

Meanwhile, the $589 increase per pupil the Chippewa Valley Schools (where Ms. Whitmer signed the supplemental appropriation Wednesday) and most other districts are getting is a 7.3 percent increase.

So if you're a superintendent in one of the hold harmless districts whose been coping with at best inflationary increases for more than 20 years, isn't one of the questions on your mind amid all this talk of achieving equity whether your district will finally enjoy parity with other districts in year to year funding changes?

The governor and the Legislature will have some major decisions to make come next year when deciding the 2022-23 budget on this topic and whether they consider the equity battle truly concluded.