Apparently, our students are worth much less than those in much of the rest of the state - primarily the tri-county area even though we pay the same sales tax as everyone else.  Most of the schools in the county are at the minimum or close to the minimum per pupil foundation grant for the state.  I don't understand the rationale as to why the legislature believes it more expensive to educate a student in Oakland, Macomb and Wayne county than in the rest of the state.  The difference in the grants is enormous as compared with the variations in the cost of living.

Could anyone help me out here?

The screaming of educators and lack of funding for local districts does hit rather close to home for me.  Our local school is struggling with enrollment (being a rural district with businesses closing) and therefore its money from the state is drying up.  And, given what I have seen of spending support, this fair system is severely flawed and decidedly unfair.

However, a quality education is very much the product of a quality environment and not just funding, and Lansing has very little concern for that learning environment.  

The state could improve education and save money by enabling school districts to do two very simple things:

1. remove disruptive students

2. remove ineffective teachers

When this country was founded, John Adams addressed this issue in a speech before the second congress.  He said something to the effect that if we were to take this term "general welfare" at it's face value there will come a day when the government pays for the education of all children.

I do not believe that the founding fathers ever imagined that we would be stealing money from the masses to educate children, and now to educate illegals to boot.

I live in the Ply-Canton School district, which has a 10% surplus and the wonderful people in the district just had us vote on a milage increase otherwise very bad things would happen.

They have a surplus of money but yet they threaten to take away things if they don't get the milage increase?

Ass-wipes!

But what is it they teach you in the Marines?  To act when noone's watching the same way you'd act if your drill sgt. had his eye on you?

Extra time has been added to our school day so the teachers can spend a couple of Mondays/month (at least in our district) working up new MEAP strategies...did anyone give thought to families having to pony up for extra daycare? We don't have time for physical education, time to teach cursive writing, or adequately develop methods for working math problems yet we want more money.  

In a state where a mass exodus of residents has been ongoing for several years, one would think the system would learn to get by on less, but instead we continue to feed the bureacracy.

Normally I don't get geeked about stuff like this but I've had enough of people waving the more money for schools flag, while at the same time, I am bombarded with begging notes that come home from the grade school asking for: paper,pencils, tissues, and other agreed upon school supplies that one of those district purchasing agents should be able to negotiate on behalf of all of us.

In addition, we use the kids as hucksters to raise money by selling trinkets and trash so they can go on field trips, buy classroom equipment etc. This begging never stops and includes everything from a weekly pickle sale (weird waste of food), the "donate" bags of wrapped candy, only so we can turn around and send quarters to school so the kids can buy the candy back and some of my favorites, planned field trips that'll cost each kid over a $100 to participate in---for which they need to raise the money, this is genius in a state where more than 10% of families live in poverty--what do we do with the kids whose families just can't make it happen, leave them behind?  ...and one last thing, I'm tired of paying extra for a big yellow bus to haul across town for a field trip, work it out internally.

Quite honestly we don't care how much it costs for the bus to be used during the school day, the teacher should be able to do the math, if they don't have the money in the budget then maybe kids will have to sit in their seats and study instead of leaving school grounds for a hiatus to a park, zoo, landfill, or whatever the attraction is today.