LANSING – An agreement between Michigan House Democrats and Senate Republicans means all school districts will see the $154 per pupil they lost in the 2009-10 fiscal year restored.

The Senate approved a new version of HB 5887 on Wednesday to address problems in the Legislature’s first attempt to appropriate $316 million in federal funds designed to preserve public school employee jobs. Governor Jennifer Granholm vetoed how $246 million of the money was spent, citing federal rules requiring the Legislature to appropriate the money through the state’s formula. The Legislature had instead appropriated $246 million of the money by giving districts $154 per pupil to restore the cut from the 2009-10 fiscal year.

In the new version of the bill, the $246 million goes out through the funding formula, with $222 per pupil to the lowest-funded districts and $111 to the highest-funded districts. But the bill includes $10 million of expected unspent money from the School Aid Fund in the 2009-10 fiscal year to bring all districts to at least $154 per pupil. Senate officials said they had to spend the money under federal maintenance of effort rules.

The bill also contains $10 million to restore a cut sustained by intermediate school districts and another $10 million to give all districts an additional $6 per pupil. Those funds also would come from the expected unspent money in the School Aid Fund.

“This education jobs money was supposed to prevent layoffs,” said Sen. Ron Jelinek (R-Three Oaks), chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee. “In order to prevent (layoffs), you would have to get back to the original funding level, and that’s what we did.”

And the bill plays a bit of a switcheroo to address the Supreme Court ruling that the state failed to provide the funding to districts to cover the cost of implementing data collection requirements. The bill appropriates $25.6 million to districts solely to pay for the costs of data collection, but also cuts districts by $25.2 million.

Jelinek said he had warned schools that the only way to compensate them in their lawsuit was with money from the School Aid Fund, meaning in the end they would see no real difference in actual funding because only so much money is available in the fund.

The House did not act on the bill. Rep. Terry Brown (D-Pigeon), chair of the House Appropriations K-12 School Aid Subcommittee, said some additional changes to the bill might yet be coming.

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