Michigan public schools would receive a record $12,000 per student, funded in large part by the elimination of roughly 100 specific earmarks, under a Fiscal Year (FY) 2026 House Republican education budget that moved through subcommittee, full appropriations and House floor Wednesday without a single Democratic yes vote.
In all, five state budgets related to education moved out of appropriations on party-line votes to the House floor by 1:25 p.m. after having moved out of subcommittee Wednesday morning, but only three of the bills – the School Aid Fund, Department of Education and the Department of Michigan Department of Lifelong Education, Advancement and Potential (MiLEAP) – passed on the floor.
HB 4576, HB 4577 and HB 4578 made it through the chamber Wednesday on 56-53 votes with Reps. Steve Carra (R-Three Rivers) and Josh Schriver (R-Oxford) voting no on all three.
The other two – higher education and community colleges – came with cuts deep enough that they reportedly gave some Republican members anxiety, so both of those budgets were put on the shelf until they could be worked out.
Wednesday’s movement is the first time the House Republicans have revealed details about their FY 2026 spending plans. Michigan’s public schools start their new budgets on July 1.
In terms of the K-12 budget, special pots of money for free lunch and breakfast, transportation, English-as-a-second language and many more are “rolled up” in HB 4577, giving school districts the option to pay for the programs if they want them.
House K-12 Appropriations Committee Chair Tim Kelly (R-Saginaw) called HB 4577 a “shock to the system” in that as many as 100 “categoricals” for specific purposes have built up in the six years since he last chaired. The House budget scraps most of them.
“Over the years, this explosion of categoricals has diverted hundreds of millions of dollars away from students,” Kelly said. “This budget restores some sort of sanity to the process. It gives us a fresh start.”
House Appropriations Committee Minority Vice Chair Alabas Farhat (D-Dearborn) said allocating money through categoricals is a form of holding the recipients accountable to achieve the goals of that money, such as feeding or bussing students.
The increase in the per-pupil foundation allowance by $1,975 to reach that $12,000 mark is meant to replace the funding lost by the roll up of categoricals. Additionally, $40.8 million in General Fund was added to per-pupil funding, and an equivalent amount is allocated to non-public schools for mental health and school safety, universal breakfast and lunch, student teacher stipends, robotics or Science Olympiad programs or literacy professional development.
Despite the constitutional conflict presented by allocating public funds to private schools, House Appropriations Committee Chair Ann Bollin (R-Brighton) said it’s something she fully supports, and she doesn’t expect litigation.
When updated Consensus Revenue Estimating Conference (CREC) figures rendered the Senate’s budget unbalanced, the House adopted a resolution stating that the chamber wouldn’t consider a bill that is “unconstitutional.”
To this comparison, Bollin asked why a private school student should be cheated out of an education or taxpayer dollars.
Bollin said these budgets were made with the removal of sales tax from motor fuel in mind. That switch accounts for about $1 billion of the House Republicans’ roads plan they passed earlier this term.
House Republicans en masse supported the spending plan that leaves in place funding for “at-risk” students and gives a little more money to the special education population. It scraps the Governor’s and Senate’s proposed 80% cut to charter schools. It creates a $286.5 million pot of one-time money for infrastructure. It puts more focus on CTE and skilled trades training and phonics.
Kelly’s “small beautiful bill” also firmly pushes the hot-button social issues of the day. HB 4577 cuts a school’s per-pupil allowance 20% if it:
- Uses a curriculum that includes race or gender stereotyping
- Uses state funding for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives
- Allows transgender girls to participate in girls’ sports
- Provides multi-stall unisex bathrooms
“We’ll see what we end up with. Whatever passes off the floor in the House today isn’t going to be what we vote on in the final budget. I understand that. Everybody knows that, but this is our opening bid,” Kelly said.
Bollin said she hopes the final budget looks similar to these bills.
The spending plan puts a heavy focus on parental involvement, requiring school officials to notify parents of how that school building stacks up in the state’s accountability system and what officials are doing to improve their standing.
“I think it’s a joke, and it’s not funny,” said the lead Democrat on the subcommittee, Rep. Carol Glanville (D-Grand Rapids), about Wednesday’s budget. “Their disrespect towards education, toward the process . . . a budget is a document of values, and they have demonstrated here today what they do and don’t value, and I would say they don’t value the children of Michigan.”
Glanville said the budget contains several “Easter eggs” that set conditions that will make it difficult for school districts to comply with. One has to do with ingredients in food. Another requires that 100% of students file the “free and reduced lunch” application. Requirements on School Resource Officers will also be difficult to hit, she said.
Kelly expressed confidence, however, that schools will be able to meet any new requirements put in the bill.
The House proposal takes out $265.8 million from the School Aid Rainy Day Fund, leaving it with $209 million. Another $738.5 million is being drained from five other funds and diverted into the School Aid Fund.
Rep. Regina Weiss (D-Oak Park), last term’s chair of the K-12 appropriations subcommittee, also blew the whistle on the House proposal not following last year’s law that reduces school districts’ health care liability from 20.96 percent to 15.22 percent. By not doing that, she argued that the state is costing school districts roughly $600 million.
The funding proposal cuts the $12,000-per-pupil into two parts. The first part is the regular per-pupil funding allowance, which is set at $10,025 per kid. The second is $1,975 more per pupil, which has no weight for students in poverty, English learners or special education, said Peter Spadafore, of the Michigan Alliance for Student Opportunity.
“The House Republicans’ education budget proposal leaves behind the most vulnerable students in our state and underscores the urgent need for Michigan to prioritize true equity in funding for students with the greatest needs,” he said.
“The House plan holds at-risk funding flat, a functional cut when inflationary pressures are factored in. Even more concerning is the elimination of several targeted programs designed to address the unique needs of students across our state.”
Dept. of Ed Loses 118 Positions Under House Plan
The Department of Education’s (MDE) funding would be cut $19.2 million and 118 full-time employee positions would be eliminated under the House Republican spending plan that passed the House after moving out of committee Wednesday morning.
HB 4576 gives the public its first peek at what House Republicans are looking to do with all of its budget in that it trims away unfilled state government positions and requires all MDE employees to report to the office five days a week.
“We’re long past COVID, and it’s time to do away with COVID policies like remote work,” Kelly said.
It mandates that no money can be used for diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) training and stops any state money from being used on implicit bias training programs.
The House’s budget, which moved on a party-line vote, is $25.7 million less than what the Senate passed ($46.5 million from $72.2 million). It gets rid of $5.6 million in state government support to libraries without touching the $16.5 million in state grants to libraries. HB 4576 also cuts $3.6 million for the Partnership District Support Operations, $1.19 million for strategic planning and $750,000 for the Michigan Core Curriculum.
Of the 118 positions that are eliminated in the budget, 65 are not filled and eliminates $9.8 million in General Fund money connected to those posts for educator excellence, accountability services, school support services and educational support operations.
Gov’s MiLEAP Additions Torpedoed In House Budget
Nearly $100 million in new spending on early education and post-graduate programs that Gov. Gretchen Whitmer And the Democratic-controlled Senate added to the Department of Lifelong Education, Advancement and Potential (MiLEAP) for Fiscal Year 2026 has been sliced out of the House Republicans’ spending plan that passed the House Wednesday.
Instead, HB 4578 keeps the size of the MiLEAP budget at around $640 million, but trims the number of full-time employees in the department by 62 from 343 to 281.
The Governor wanted to add eight more accountants as opposed to contracting out for the service. The House, instead, cut 15 full-time employees from MiLEAP’s executive office. Another 28 full-time employee positions were cut from the department’s child care licensing and information technology divisions.
Rep. Greg Markkanen (R-Hancock), the chair of the House subcommittee in charge of the MiLEAP budget, said the goal was to craft a MiLEAP budget that is more fiscally responsible and streamlined as opposed to having the Department running over budget, which he said is the case now.
Democrats raised targeted questions on specific cuts or other items the budget doesn’t fund.
To these, Markkanen said on numerous occasions that specific items were negotiable.
Other interesting pieces of the budget include:
- Continues the Tri-Share Child Care program, which splits costs among the employee, employer and the state, but adds benchmarks to the program.
- Allows any resident to seek a $100 fine from MiLEAP in the Court of Claims every time an employee uses a pronoun in email signatures, business cards and department letterheads.
- Prevents MiLEAP from using any state or federal money for services, grants or programming for any non-citizen who isn’t in the country legally unless the money is used to hold these non-citizens in jail, prison or some correctional facility.
- Restricts MiLEAP from using any money for DEI programs.
Article courtesy MIRS News for SBAM’s Lansing Watchdog newsletter
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