FY ’16 School Aid Budget Passed

Conference Committee Reports FY ’16 School Aid Budget
The Senate-House Conference Committee today passed, on a 5-0 vote, HB 4089, which represents the final version of the $14 billion FY ’16 School Aid Budget. The contents of HB 4089 will be added to HB 4115, which will become the omnibus education spending bill for K-12, higher education and community colleges.

“GLEP appreciates the hard work done by conferees, especially Chairman Tim Kelly in the House and Chairman Goeff Hansen in the Senate, and we are pleased this budget takes another step in closing the funding equity gap for Michigan students,” said Gary Naeyaert, GLEP Executive Director.

From GLEP’s perspective, the final budget improves upon the Governor’s Executive Recommendations in a number of areas, and our top priority issue continues to be creating a uniform per-per pupil foundation grant for all students. Here are the details of the foundation grant in the final budget:

• $140 increase in Minimum foundation grant to $7,391 per pupil
• $70 increase in Basic foundation grant to $8,169 per pupil
• Use of 2x equity formula reduces the funding gap to $778 per pupil
• The PSA/charter school “Maximum” is also $7,391 per pupil

Below are additional highlights:

• MPSERS: $993 million “off the top” of the School Aid Fund just to shore up the state school employee retirement system, which represents $660 for every pupil in the state.
• DPS Debt:$50 million in “unappropriated” funds remain on the balance sheet, which could be used in the future to address DPS debt.
• Best Practices: Eliminated
• Performance Funding: Eliminated
• Technology Grants: Reduced to $23.5 million
• At-Risk Funding: Increased by $70 million to $379 million
• K-3 Reading: $26.4 million in new funding to support early literacy efforts
• Categorical Offsets: Increased to $18 million to guarantee a minimum net increase of $25 per pupil when adding foundation allowance and At-Risk increases plus the elimination of Best Practices and Performance Funding.

Click here for an overview of key issues in the FY ‘16 School Aid Budget, here for a detailed section-by-section summary and here for a district-by-district funding estimates.