Over the past 15 years, student enrollment in Michigan public schools has steadily declined. K-12 per-pupil revenues also dipped slightly in the early 2010s as rebounding state revenues failed to grow fast enough to make up for the expiration of federal stimulus dollars following the Great Recession. Despite the continuing enrollment decline, starting in 2014, local and state revenues for schools grew steadily, putting per-pupil revenues at an inflation-adjusted high on the eve of the COVID-19 pandemic.[1]
The governor’s April 2020 decision to extend the shutdown of school buildings through the remainder of the academic year came with a guarantee to preserve districts’ 2019-2020 funding levels, provided they met a few basic conditions. One condition was to continue paying all district employees, even if staff members needed to be redeployed to carry out plans for remote instruction and related services.[2] But calls for additional funding increased.[3] Education officials expressed fears about interruptions to schools’ state funding sources and anticipated extra expenses to reach students through internet-based distance instruction and to abide by added safety protocols to return to classrooms.
Fortunately for school officials, those fears proved to be unwarranted. Federal and state efforts kept school districts fiscally whole for the remainder of 2019-2020, for the following 2020-2021 school year and potentially even beyond that. On average, totaling all extra funds resulting from COVID-19 funding relief efforts, public schools in Michigan will receive more than $4,600 extra per pupil. One perhaps unexpected result of the COVID-19 pandemic is that many Michigan schools will be funded at extraordinarily elevated levels.