K-12 Alliance: Legislature must pass School Aid Budget by July 1

The K-12 Alliance of Michigan released the following statement from Walled Lake Consolidated Schools Superintendent and K-12 Alliance of Michigan President Ken Gutman calling on the legislature to pass the School Aid Budget no later than July 1.

While we appreciate the incredible amount of work that goes into crafting state budgets, we have only two weeks left until our schools’ new fiscal year starts and seeing the legislature cancel session days is raising the concern of every school administrator about Lansing’s commitment to completing this budget on time. Having a finalized budget is what allows school leaders to plan for the upcoming year, make critically important hires and set our schools up for success. Any delay in that process will make hiring critically needed tutors, reading coaches and other staff harder as we are forced to put those decisions off while potential employees take jobs elsewhere. We need our elected leaders to commit to completing work on a full school-aid budget that puts the needs of our students first no later than July 1st, even if that means passing it separately from the rest of the state budget as they did last year.

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The K-12 Alliance of Michigan is a coalition of education leaders committed to fighting for strong K-12 schools across Michigan. Comprised of Superintendents from every district in Genesee, Macomb, Oakland, St. Clair, and Wayne counties, they are collectively responsible for educating over 580,000 students.