Why I'm Running

In Michigan, we have over 800 independent publicly-funded local school districts (traditional districts and charter public academies), 56 independent regional service agencies (commonly known as intermediate school districts) and two state departments that have some direct role in the public education system. These numbers are down from our peak of over 8,000 local districts a century ago, a number that arguably included a lot of one room school houses. But it’s up 30% from the effects of passage of the School District Reorganization Act of 1964; a time when high school access became universal across our state. Our student population is just over 1.4 million young people, down from a peak of over 2 million around that same time. 

 

I write all this to illustrate the magnitude of independence of our public education system, and to open the conversation to the fact that we need to improve how local districts, intermediate service agencies and the state work together. Each entity noted above has a role, but many times, each functions almost completely independent of one another. This means that in our current system's structure, making important changes to improve academic achievement, keep our students and staff safe, and to better support our educators is difficult and leads to deep inequity from district to district. We need to fix that.

 

For instance, I think it’s absolutely wonderful that young people in one district have access to incredible CTE and STEM programs, but I also think it’s a travesty that students in a neighboring district do not. Solving these problems of inequity is not just a matter of increasing funding, but being intentional about investing funding and leveraging statute and policy together to create a level playing field for parents and young people to choose from. This is how we create a more coherent, equitable and effective system - one where our tax dollars and policies work hand-in-hand, directly with a connected regional structure, to support world class teaching and learning in every school building. There is no reason we can’t do this while maintaining the importance of independence, but have to be more intentional about it than we are now.