Proj. Washtenaw: impact of Senate cuts on WISD districts

The Senate Fiscal Agency has published estimates of the impact of cuts included in the Senate’s school aid budget bill, with detail for each district and public school academy (charter school) in the state. To get a copy of the full document, you can find it here [1].

As part of our Project Washtenaw effort, we’d like to highlight some of the potential consequences to districts in the Washtenaw ISD. The WISD includes districts with a wide range of characteristics, so the impact here can say a lot about what is happening state wide.

In terms of raw dollars, the biggest loser is the Ann Arbor Public Schools, which stands to lose $2.2 million next year if the Senate cuts stand. Most of this comes from the $110 per pupil cut. The other large districts also stand to lose, for the same reason: Saline, $629,000; Lincoln Consolidated, $699,000.

But some districts will stand to lose quite a bit – and sometimes even more – from the elimination of other programs. Ypsilanti, for instance, would lose almost as much from the elimination of school readiness programs (Great Start, and similar programs) – $408,000 – as it would from the per-pupil cut ($419,000). Willow Run would get hit three ways: $199,000 from the per-pupil reduction, $231,000 from the elimination of school readiness programs, and nearly $131,000 from cuts to funding for districts with declining enrollment. Lincoln would also lose heavily from the school readiness cuts: $119,000 of its total losses stem from the elimination of those programs.

Table: Potential impact of cuts from the Senate version of HB 4447 on WISD school districts