Governor Whitmer Wants To Increase Spending On K-12 Education By An Additional 8%. What About the Billions Of Covid Money They Were Given?
In her latest budget proposal, after millions and in some cases 100’s of millions of Federal tax dollars given to Michigan schools Governor Whitmer wants to increase their budget an additional 8.4%.
Do they need it? Let’s look at the numbers.
The current K-12 school budget is $ 16,978,110,700 and Governor Whitmer is proposing an increase to approximately $18.4 billion. She is asking for this increase on top of all of the Biden Bucks that was passed out by the Democrats from the world’s largest slush fund. To find out how much your Michigan school district received in Covid slush fund tax dollars click on the previous hotlink.
The following are some examples from that database:
• Detroit received over $808 million dollars
• Lansing schools received over $67 million dollars
• Pontiac schools received over $39 million dollars
• Battle Creek Schools received over $32 million dollars
• Ann Arbor schools received over $15 million dollars
• Southfield schools received over $14 million dollars
• and Oak Park schools received $8 million dollars
As a point of interest with all of those above millions, it is important to note that the above schools’ districts were closed for in-person instruction for the beginning of this 2022 school year. If Detroit schools received over $808 million, why would they need an additional 8.4%? They probably have no idea what they are going to do with the $808 million other than giving it to themselves.
The dirty little secret Whitmer and her Democrat colleagues are not telling you is our K-12 student population has been declining since the 2002/2003 school year when Michigan had a total of 1,714,867 students. The estimated number of K-12 students for the 2021/2022 school year is approximately 1,406,000. That is a decrease of 308,867 students or over an 18% decline of students in the classroom. What are they doing with all of this cash?
Now you know the real numbers and you can decide if the K-12 public schools in Michigan need even more cash.