State Budget cuts Affect Local Public Schools

By KAITLIN DOYLE

Since the start of 2010, another set of cuts to the education fund in the state of Michigan have taken affect, leaving school districts with $165 less per student.
According the Jeff Morgan, superintendent of the Kearsley School District in Flint, these cuts are having damaging effects on school districts across the state.
“For the past seven years, Kearsley has cut support staff, privatized custodians, eliminated some services and positions not directly related to instruction, reduced sections of students, reinvented alternative education and the gifted and talented programs and shared services,” Morgan said. “Last year we laid-off some teachers as our enrollment shrunk and revenue from the state was reduced.”
Morgan said the district also had to cut education programs to accommodate the loss of funding.
“Elementary KATS gifted and talented was cut five years ago,” he said. “One middle school elective, Money Matters, was cut last year. Two years ago we eliminated the Auto Shop program since students could take that class at the Genesee Area Skill Center and the enrollment for Auto Shop II was low.”
Despite the Michigan Promise scholarship being eliminated, Gov. Jennifer Granholm now proposed the idea of changing the scholarship into a refundable tax credit that would be given to college graduates if they stayed in Michigan and worked for one year after graduation.
Morgan said the new proposal is a creative method to resurrect the scholarship, but believes there is no revenue to fund it.
“I’d like to see it save the shrinking middle class for post secondary opportunities,” he said. “At Kearsley, we’ve seen a big shift in students attending Mott Community College and U of M Flint in lieu of the four-year (away from home) university.”
Morgan also said he believes state legislators and the governor need to fix the school aid funding formula.
“Proposal A does not work in this type of economy,” he said. “Gov. Granholm has only put Band-Aids on the problem which needs a major overhaul.”