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.

25 March — Numbers, numbers, everywhere. Lots of numbers have been tossed around — $377 million deficit in the School Aid Fund, $220 per pupil reduction, and more — but when you look at the details these numbers don’t always seem to add up. Thanks to non-partisan staffers in Lansing (at the Senate and House Fiscal Agencies), information is available on the web that helps clear up some of the confusion, even if the underlying problems remain unchanged.

Public school officials have begun to speak out about the funding crisis which faces schools across the state. They not only decry the repeated resort to mid-year funding cuts, they also call for a reassessment of how public education is funded.