Aptly titled "Michigan Republicans celebrate National Teacher Appreciation Week by voting to strip more school funding," it succinctly states:
As I reported yesterday, the Michigan House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure voted to eliminate the sales tax on aviation fuel. This bill is in addition toHouse Bill 4539 which if passed, will eliminate the sales tax on gasoline sales in our state. My piece said that this would take $770.1 million out of the School Aid Fund (SAF). However, that amount is only for the repeal of the gasoline tax. According to a statement by State Rep. Brandon Dillon, yesterday’s repeal of the aviation fuel tax will remove another $55 million . That means if both bills are passed, $825.1 million more will be taken from our kids’ schools.
Yes, you read that right. That, by the way, is in addition to the $1.8 billion dollars the School Aid Fund has lost since Rick Snyder took office.
Read the rest of his post here.
In the meantime, does anyone out there personally know Rick Snyder? Would you PLEASE PLEASE intervene and ask him to veto anything that takes more money from the School Aid Fund without replacing it with other funding?
Eclectablog concludes:
So, make yourself heard on this. Call your State Representatives and Senators and tell them to vote no on House Bills 4539 and 4572 and to fund road repair in an honest way. Here are some ways you can reach out to lawmakers:
- Click HERE to go to a page with contact information for your legislators. MAKE THE CALL!
- Click HERE to send a message to your legislator via the Michigan Parents for Schools website
- Click HERE to send a message via the Tri-County Alliance for Public Education
Here's my take on this fairly significant move on the Republican's part. They are trying to force down the cost of running schools down to the $5000/kid amount the skunkworks was dreaming about.
ReplyDeleteIt also looks like the school funding crisis is beginning to truly spin out of control.To me, Buena Vista and Pontiac are just sentinal events. It's kind of awful as it seems to be like there's no way to get through to Snyder and we'll just be stuck watching these slow moving train wrecks of school closures or near school closures during the next school year across the state until Nov 2014 with no effective intervention from the governor's office. Snyder doesn't understand what he's doing wrong, and until he does, or he gets voted out and we get some more new legislators this is just how it is.