This article was published in the Other Voices series of op-ed columns by the Ann Arbor News on Sunday, June 14, 2009. The version posted on the Mlive.com web site is available here.

The school budget news from Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti, and other communities in Washtenaw County is disturbing, and for good reason. School officials say that in the next two years we will all be driving over the edge of a “funding cliff” that threatens to injure our public schools for years to come. Some school districts are on the brink of failure, while others are having to cut teaching staff for the first time in recent memory. The depth of the coming crisis varies for each district, but the crisis is coming just the same. The question is, should we try to do something about it? Should we the people, the taxpayers, be worried?

The answer should be a resounding “YES!”

The subtitle of a MIPFS position paper, “Why educating kids isn’t like building cars,” can get a couple of interesting reactions. For some, it confirms the idea that unions have no place in the schools. For others, it smacks of a betrayal of union solidarity. I didn’t mean either of those things when I wrote it, and now seems like a good time to explain what we do mean by that phrase.

This Friday (9 January), the state’s top economists will meet, as required by law, and project how much tax revenue Michigan will gather this fiscal year. That’s when we find out how bad things are. If, as most observers suspect, they estimate that revenues will be less than expected, the governor is required by law to propose spending cuts for the current year to bring the budget into balance – unless the Legislature can find a way to plug the hole. This process includes K-12 school funding; the vast majority of the money to operate Michigan’s schools comes from the state School Aid Fund and is supported by state-wide taxes. This is not the first time our schools have gone through this ringer, but maybe it should be the last?

Here at MIPFS, we have always argued that private giving to our public schools can be an important way for communities to take back the destiny of their school systems. But we also insist that private giving cannot, and should not, replace our common responsibility to see to the education of our communities’ children.

Evidently some of our state legislators do not quite agree.

Nearly every school district passed its budget for this year last June, our children went back to school this week, and the State’s new fiscal year begins in 24 days. But, as yet, there is no agreement in Lansing on what schools will be allowed to spend this year, let alone how it will be paid for.

You would think this would put school systems in a bind, and you would be right. Sadly, the fate of our schools and our children’s education takes a back seat to larger issues, namely: who is going to take the blame for increasing taxes.

Jack Lessenberry, senior political analyst for Michigan Public Radio, posted a short but forceful essay on school funding in his web blog. I quote his opening paragraph below, but the whole essay is worth a read:

Here’s the question we’re all trying to avoid. Do we want public schools, or not? Do we want to be able to tell people that they can move to Michigan, and put their children in our schools?

You can find the full essay here:
http://jackshow.blogs.com/jack/2007/04/essay_public_sc.html

Taxes. There, now I’ve said it. It’s a word no one wants to hear, especially now that Michigan’s economy seems to be sliding downhill. (And never in April.)

But wishing won’t make it go away. So here is the question:

Do we really have to pay more taxes to get decent schools? Don’t we pay enough already?

Well, it depends. What do you want your kids’ schools to look like ten years from now? What would you like our state’s economy to look like thirty years from now? That’s really the bottom line. To quote a colleague of mine, “You get what you pay for.”

In a deft reversal of spin, Republican lawmakers and allied “opinion leaders” are pushing the notion that Senate Republicans have taken leadership on the budget question, including school aid, by passing their two appropriations bills last week. It’s the Democrats and the Governor, they argue, who should be called on the carpet for not presenting their plans. But it is useful to recall that the Republican plan remained secret until just hours before their two key bills, one cutting general state spending and the other shaving back school aid funds, were pushed to a quick vote on the floor of the Senate. Gov. Granholm’s original plan, which relied on new and restructured taxes but did not cut school funding, was summarily killed off in the upper house. This leaves the Republican leadership in the enviable position of being the “spoiler” on budget issues, able to poke holes and make points without having to take any heat for potential tax increases.