Support and Fund Michigan Public Schools

"We the undersigned parents, residents and employees of Novi Community Schools, want fundamental change in the way Michigan funds public education.  Further, we ask your support in overriding the Governor's vetoes, reversing the additional $3.5 million cuts to our district."

Two weeks ago the original State School Aid bill that was passed by our legislators cut our district $165 per student.  Then within the next week's time, the Governor line-item vetoed our 20j categorical of $280 per student and then, issued a proration reduction of an additional $127 per student.  Added together, Novi will experience a budget cut of $572 per student or $3.5 million this year.  This puts Michigan in a negative light and wrongly uses our children in the political process. We are letting our legislators know the cuts are unacceptable and must be restored.  It is unfortunate for the children of Michigan to be caught in the middle of our legislators' struggle to develop a short and long term solution. Our legislators in Lansing must fix the structural issues of school funding in Michigan.  These cuts are unacceptable and poorly timed for the students of Novi and the children of Michigan.

These line item vetoes by the Governor and lack of alternate funding solutions by the legislature means that the promise of Proposal A is broken.  Proposal A was intended to keep higher funded districts where they were (held harmless) and bring up the lower funded districts, not lower all districts.  As such, our citizens pay higher taxes to maintain the quality of the schools that we have here in Novi.  We are, in fact, a donor district in a donor county. That means our citizens pay to support all the public schools in Michigan and now we are being financially penalized greater than other districts. The impact of the 20j cut in Novi is $1.7 million for this current school year, along with the $1.8 million ($165 and $127 per pupil) funding cut, equals $3.5 million!

We ask that our students be treated in an equitable manner and not unfairly punished because they live in a donor district. These cuts are coming at a time just when the expectations have never been higher for public schools, and the failure of our Legislature to fully fund education makes meeting these expectations extremely difficult.  

We urge you to vote to override the line item vetoes to reverse the latest cuts to school aid.  The inherent unfairness of these cuts and in the current system of funding K-12 education, not only to students, but to taxpayers is not the way to rebuild our economy and a bright future for Michigan.  The Legislature needs to return to their "classroom" and properly fund all public schools in Michigan. 

We, the undersigned parents, residents and employees of Novi Community Schools, want fundamental change in the way Michigan funds public education. Further, we ask for your support in overriding the Governor's vetoes, reversing the $3.5 million cut in our district.