New School Year Set to Begin, Yet State Budget Remains in Limbo

“Our Students and Educators Deserve Better,”
State Superintendent Says

LANSING – State and federal budget action and inaction have the potential to adversely affect school children as classes begin to resume, Michigan Department of Education (MDE) leaders are warning.

The Michigan Legislature missed the statutorily required deadline of July 1 to pass a budget and there is still no deal in place, which creates uncertainty about how much funding schools will have for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1. Meanwhile, actions and proposed actions at the federal level related to education are creating more uncertainty.

“Our students and educators deserve better,” said State Superintendent Dr. Michael F. Rice.

MDE officials last week provided the State Board of Education with an update on the federal and state budget proposals: Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s executive budget recommendation and the House and Senate budget bills for school aid and for MDE. Dr. Diane Golzynski, deputy superintendent for Business, Health, and Library Services, and Ms. Olivia Ponte, legislative liaison, presented the State Board of Education with an update.

Ponte said that in the current 2025 fiscal year, $461.7 million is diverted from the state school aid budget to the Higher Education budget. The state House plan, House Bill 4577, would more than quadruple this number and would take over $1.9 billion from grades pre-K-12 students to give to postsecondary institutions. Road funding could further erode education revenue. 

The state House budget would place in a single funding category, Section 22f, several essential items including but not limited to universal school breakfast and lunch; funding for English learners; per-pupil funding for children’s mental health and school safety; early literacy coaches; career and technical education programs; and assessments, to be allocated on a per-pupil basis. Such an approach fails to acknowledge that districts must fund certain areas, and that districts have different mixes of children.

“Different students have different needs. Different needs have different costs,” Golzynski said.

Dr. Rice added, “Distributing dollars without regard to the fact that different students have different needs returns us to the inequitable funding formula of the past. We’ve made strides on school funding equity in Michigan the last few years. We need to continue to do so.”   

While the annual state and federal budget years begin on Oct. 1, local school districts and intermediate school districts have a fiscal year that starts on July 1.

“School leaders are in a tricky situation,” Dr. Rice said. “For many years, the state legislature would regularly complete its budget work in September, but differences among the budgets of the governor, House, and Senate were minimal. While budgets were finalized after school began, district leaders knew roughly what to expect.

“The same is not true today. I don’t ever recall in my career so little clarity about approximately where school funding in the annual budget will land. It is troubling and, if not rectified very soon with the passage of a reasonable budget for schools, will ultimately hurt children.”

Rice urges the state legislature to adopt a budget consistent with Goal 8 of the Michigan’s Top 10 Strategic Education Plan, to provide adequate and equitable school funding, including boosting the per pupil foundation allowance and addressing far more substantially the need for greater funding for students with disabilities, economically disadvantaged students, and English learners.

Golzynski and Ponte also said MDE continues to request that the state legislature support through funding and policy four literacy-related recommendations:

• Mandatory Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling (LETRS) training for K-5 classroom teachers. MDE has encouraged educators to complete LETRS science of literacy training and more than 5,000 have done so, but absent a legislative requirement, many will not take and finish the training.
• Low-class sizes in high poverty K-3 classrooms.
• Research-based, high-quality early literacy materials.
• More in-person student instruction time.

MDE has about 1% of the state employees with roughly 2/10 of 1% of the state’s budget to disburse and oversee nearly 25% of the state budget. The governor’s budget recommendation calls for an increase of 13 full-time-equivalent positions for the department and the Senate’s budget an increase of 15 full-time-equivalent positions, while the House’s budget would cut the department’s budget by 118 full-time-equivalent positions, or 20.5%.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration’s fiscal year 2026 budget proposal would eliminate such programs as Title I-C (support for Migrant Education) and Title III (support for English Learners) and would block-grant others such as Title II (Supporting Effective Instruction) and Title IV-A (Student Support and Academic Enrichment Grants). Many parents, educators, and advocates are concerned about potential cuts to portions of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), funding for special education.

To date, Congress has not approved fiscal year 2026 budgets for the U.S. Education Department, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the Institute of Museum and Library Services. Congress, however, did approve and the president did sign into law Public Act 119-21 in July, which cuts eligibility for Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program known as SNAP. These cuts will decrease the ability of schools to serve at-risk children.

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