No Child Left Behind: Parents Blast School Funding Scheme in Michigan

That's a pretty common query - issued in varying degrees of hostility - as tens of thousands of rural Michigan residents and taxpaying parents grapple with the costs and mandates of educating their children.

In the usually quiet hills and valleys of Michigan's small, rural and farming communities, there's open discussion during this election year of trying to force changes to the state's Constitution to return to local residents the authority they once had over funding their local schools.

Elected officials would do well to pay heed.

At the heart of the issue is the perfect storm of high energy and insurance costs, shrinking student enrollments, unfunded-but-mandated requirements associated with the federal No Child Left Behind Act, and corresponding state strictures that pass the cost burden of NCLB down to the local level.

Small wonder that parents today complain that they bear all of the fiscal responsibility for maintaining an education system, the content and quality of which they now have virtually no control.

In Michigan, that's a quadruple whammy that exacerbates an already sore spot among state taxpayers who want to financially support the operational end of local education, but literally, can't. No matter how rich the community or how dedicated the parents are to local-based schools, pocketbooks are sealed shut due to a decade-old Michigan Constitutional amendment that caps local homestead property tax contributions to six mills - that's $6 per $1,000 of a property's valuation.

If parents want to pay additional taxes to broaden the local curriculum, pay their teachers more or add enrichment classes, the Michigan Constitution says they may not do so.

To add insult to injury, that 6-mill State Education Tax (SET) isn't captured in the local district - it's sent to the state for bundling with other districts' taxes, then redistributed equally to all Michigan public school districts on a per-pupil basis.

For rural school districts in sparsely populated areas, the per-pupil distribution is viewed as unfair and punitive. Some districts, such as River Valley Public Schools in southwestern Michigan, range a sprawling 95 square miles to scoop up fewer than 900 youngsters who live in nine different communities.

Just three school buildings serve the district. A fleet of school buses, all running on costly gasoline, is required to navigate the dark and often narrow backroads to ensure that students get to school on time every day.

With gasoline prices skyrocketing some 60 percent in the past year, state-mandated local "contributions" to public employee insurance and pension plans, and the host of costly new standards and testing preparations needed to satisfy state and federal regulators, district officials point out that the state school aid payment is woefully inadequate to meet the needs of most small school districts.

Ironically, River Valley district's tax revenue is way up in recent years, due to a huge influx of high-end vacation homes that grew up along Lake Michigan's shoreline during the housing boom.

But the constitution's cap on local funding for operations means more than half of River Valley's local tax collection is shipped off to the School Aid Fund in the state capital - and never returns to help support the cash-strapped local schools.

The state education funding plan, when devised, was well-intended: To "equalize" K-12 education funding across the state and remove the enormous funding barriers faced by school districts in poor communities and impoverished neighborhoods. That's where the tax revenue was too sparse to provide even the most rudimentary tools for education.

In today's regulated and high-cost environment, the financial pain has simply shifted to assail smaller and more rural school districts, forcing deep cuts in programs and services, defunding enrichment curricula, lowering teacher pay, and eliminating field trips.

At town hall meetings across the state, legislators are getting an earful during this election year from frustrated parents and beleaguered school officials. The complaint: The state-centralized funding imbalance that caps local taxes for operations and limits state-aid payments based on enrollment has outlived its utility and has failed to achieve the equality of education it promised.