MEA Votes

For too long, politicians in Lansing have been sacrificing our children's education and future with harmful cuts while leaving plenty of loopholes and ineffective tax loophole programs in place. MEA has been continually calling for an end to these wasteful programs and an independent study just released shows which are effective are which are not.

From MEA's release -

If there’s not enough money in the coffers, how are you supposed to budget it?

That’s the quandary faced by Gov. Granholm – and, by proxy, our schools across Michigan. Because our antiquated tax system isn’t handling the challenges of a 21st century economy, we’re not bringing in enough revenue to fund schools and other critical public services.

That’s led to huge cuts to K-12 spending – a $165 per pupil cut by the Legislature; $54 million in line item vetoes by the governor; and another $127 per pupil proration announced yesterday by the governor.

Michiganders are mad, and rightly so.

By passing a $165 per pupil cut to public education late last night, legislators seemed to disregard the 77 percent of voters who said to not cut schools -- not to mention the thousands of public school supporters who contacted legislators over the past few weeks urging them to invest in our children's futures.

Granted, the deficit our leaders faced was immense -- and the cut did shrink from its original $218 per pupil level, thanks in large part to the outreach made by those dedicated school employees, parents, students, school administrators, business leaders and others who believe in the value of public education.

But how do we FIX this problem? We’ve tried to cut our way out of this budget crisis for a decade now to no avail -- and next year sounds even worse than what we've just been through.

In a press statement last night, MEA President Iris K. Salters summed up the whole situation quite well...

A poll released today by EPIC-MRA showed that only about a quarter of Michigan voters support a cuts-only solution to the state budget crisis.

That must be news to legislative leaders in Lansing who are pushing for one!

At a meeting of the Detroit Economic Club on Monday, Speaker of the House Andy Dillon (D-Redford Township) and Sen. Majority Leader Mike Bishop (R-Rochester) seemed on the same page about budget cuts, but not about the new revenue that would make those cuts palatable.

MEA participated in two different calls for real solutions to the budget crisis on Tuesday, while legislative leaders inched closer to a budget deal that is no bargain for anyone else in the state.