Board of Education meets to discuss funding cuts

MICHIGAN (NEWSCHANNEL 3) – On Monday, Michigan's Board of Education met to discuss recent funding cuts and how work around them in the school year.

Some at the meeting called it a disaster scenario for schools, one where districts are going to have to figure out what to do in the middle of the school year about major cuts. But that is only the short-term question, and there are deeper issues in the long-term, issues that involve decisions that are likely to be very painful.

Godwin Heights and Wyoming Superintendent Jon Felske testified on Monday before the State Board of Education.

"We're in a very difficult time," said Felske, "but how many suit, how many white-collared people do we have to have to do our business?"

Felske is a model for change, currently he's a dual-superintendent, a unique way to manage school districts and a model that could be the start of major regional alliances to try to cut costs in districts.

"Due to this crisis, we need the support of your organization and your leaderships from your state superintendent to do some things back home without the huge resistance, because we need to move on because our number one job is still educating our children," said Felske.

Some of the solutions to issues brought forward by economists who were invited by the Board of Education to promote solutions at Monday's meeting raised some eyebrows.

"I think inevitably it's going to mean teachers are going to get paid less," said Lou Glazer of Michigan Future, Inc. "We still have relatively high teacher salaries that we can't afford. It's not that I favor it, you don't have the money."

Other school administrators are promoting a plan to change health benefits, that just the school employee should be covered under the MESSA plan, but immediate family members would pay for the benefits.

All the proposals will likely be discussed in the coming months as structural reforms to a structural funding problem.

"Unfortunately all the important decisions that need to be made have been delayed and delayed and delayed," said Patrick Anderson of Anderson Economic Group, "and now we're sitting here with a disaster scenario halfway through the fiscal year."

Short-term economists with political leanings either way say that reforms and tax changes are needed, perhaps broadening and lowering the sales tax to fund schools.

"There is no quick-fix tax change that results in us having a revenue stream that matches what we used to have when we were one of the wealthier states in the country," said Anderson.