By natebailey, Section News Posted on Fri Mar 23, 2007 at 11:58:55 AM EST
Listening to the Democrats, you'd think the small cut to school funding passed by the Senate last night was the end of the world.
Let's judge that by the numbers.
Read the rest of this week's column below the fold...
$34.
$7,051.
$800.
1
2 cents.
$86-$165
Of these numbers, you're probably only going to hear about the first one for the next several weeks. But you need all of them to tell the full story.
Let me explain, one-by-one:
$34
This is the per-pupil funding cut to schools proposed and passed by the Michigan Senate. It's a much smaller cut than many had expected. The governor has proposed much larger cuts almost every year of her tenure.
$7,051
The amount the state will still provide per-pupil. For the record, per-pupil funding, adjusted for inflation, has increased more than 13% over the past decade.
$800
Amount, after the cut, that Michigan's per-pupil funding level is above the national average.
1
The number of students a school with 200 students would have to gain to make up the total $34 per-pupil cut.
2 cents
Now we get more interesting. Allocating 2 cents of every per pupil dollar toward in-classroom spending would generate an additional $141.02. That's $141 per student. That's over $100 more than the per student cut passed by the Senate. Michigan, as mentioned above, spends among the nation's highest per-pupil. But the actual number of dollars getting to the classroom is among the nation's lowest. Putting just 2 more cents on the dollar into the classroom would have a tremendous and positive impact on children and educators. Any cuts would have to be borne by the bureaucracy that doesn't touch educating students. What a shame.
$86-$165
More interestingly yet, this is the range of savings, per-pupil, that a comprehensive study indicated could be saved by changing the mechanism of providing benefits to teachers. Just the mechanism - not the benefits themselves. Right now, many schools provide benefits to their employees through the firm MESSA. It just so happens that MESSA is owned by the MEA (yes, that's the Michigan Education Association - the primary union for Michigan's teachers). By pooling the insurance of teachers, and doing so outside the union structure, the Hay Group's report suggested there would be hundreds of millions of dollars in savings. (That's $86-$165 per-pupil for those who got lost in the acronyms section)
Allow me to summarize:
the cut is minor
even with the cut, schools are still getting more per-pupil than they did 3 years ago
Michigan's schools will still be funded well above the national average
And:
over $200 per student could be pumped into the classroom through common-sense changes.
a $200 increase is much more than a $34 cut.
Yep, this planned cut is a disaster. Schools will close. Children will be naked and hungry on the streets. Teachers will have to resort to dealing drugs to make ends meet. The world as we know it will come to an end.
