March 15th will be the 20 year anniversary since Proposal A was adopted in Michigan. We adjusted the property tax and went from 4% to 6% sales tax, and allowed the state to take control of school funding. Instead of schools being funded primarily by local property tax, it is funded by the state and the funding is based on student population. This was supposed to equal out the gap from wealthy districts to poor districts, and provide an equal education to all. It was also promoted as elevating the quality of education by rewarding the schools that do better. Instead it just seems to punish the school that are doing poorly and those schools always seem to be the low income districts.
Since schools are funded biased on the number of students, I wonder if school boards make their decisions on what provides better education, or what will bring in more students to the district. I wonder how many schools have added a marketing department to their school budget? Instead of school districts working with each other, they are working on “stealing” kids from other districts to increase their budgets. Rivalries should be on the sports field and not about educating our kids.
It’s time that our state leaders start leading, and review proposal A and figure out what worked and what didn’t, and come up with a new proposal. Maybe change school funding so it is based half on student population and half on district population. I am not an expert and don’t have all the answers, but I know what we are doing now is not working. I think it’s time the state starts working on Proposal B.