Tell Lansing to Stop the Shell Game

We need your help today right away to remind Lansing that we care about our local public schools!

The Legislature is voting today on school funding - for everyone's district. While the final numbers might change a bit, the choices they make now will shape the kind of support our schools get. Unfortunately, it looks as if our Legislature just doesn't think our schools need any support. 

A few key things about the budget proposals now on the table: 

• They all divert $400 million in funding intended for K-12 schools to colleges and universities (instead of finding an honest way of paying for higher education); 
• Total dollars available to our K-12 schools will be LESS than this year, no matter which plan they pick; 
• The plans really only differ in how they shift some money around in a strange kind of shell game;
• They all sneak in a provision that looks innocent but really opens the door to the "one from column A, one from column B" kind of funding system proposed in the infamous "Oxford report" - which is really a backdoor voucher system. 

Let Lansing know what you think! Contact your lawmakers today by phone or email. 
Key things to tell them: 

1. We didn't like the Oxford Foundation in December ("unbundling" of school classes so kids take classes from multiple entities and our community schools are destroyed) in December and we don't like it now. While claiming the Oxford Foundation was "dead" and being told by all our legislators that it was "going nowhere," it turns out that is not the case. The "2 online classes" they snuck into the budgets is just a hidden Oxford Foundation plan. Tell you legislators NO to that provision (this does NOT impact the innovative online practices being used currently by your districts). The secret meetings revealed last week via the Detroit News show the master plan: park kids in front of computer screens to further cut education and end community schools. This is real folks—I'm not making this up. 
2. Fund the pensions fairly. Charter schools do not have to pay into the pension fund and thus should not receive the same allocation per student—the pension fund problem should be fixed in Lansing since they created the problem. It isn't fair to bill districts for the liability AFTER distributing the money (charters then just get to keep that extra money). 
3. Stop the continued raid of the School Aid Fund. Our schools are devastated and cannot cut anymore without our children's education suffering dearly. Tell legislators, who all say they support schools, to actually do that—support the schools. 

Content Credit: Steve Norton from Michigan Parents for Schools