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 MI
Kuipers to Hold School "Budget Busters" Hearings
MI
State Releasing First School Safety Report
MI
U.S. Supreme Court Shuns Detroit School Takeover
Case
MI
Granholm Sees Both Good and Risk in Bush Medicaid
Proposal
from Gongwer News
Service, February 24, 2003
For more articles visit
www.bridges4kids.org.
KUIPERS TO HOLD SCHOOL "BUDGET BUSTERS"
HEARINGS
Gongwer News Service, February 24, 2003
With an eye toward state budgets that have already cut state
aid to schools and could mean additional scalebacks in the
upcoming year, a Senate committee this week will begin a
review of possible state requirements that could be done away
with to allow schools to be run more efficiently. Sen. Wayne
Kuipers (R-Holland), chair of the Education Committee, said he
wants to know how the state is stifling creativity or adding
costs through regulations that may have little value.
The changes on the table could range from early retirement
programs to revising the role of intermediate school districts
to recalculating how districts meet state instructional
requirements.
"We want to help districts meet the costs of providing good
quality education," Mr. Kuipers said of what he dubs "budget
buster weeks". "If the state is standing in the way of doing
that, we want to identify that and try to write it out of the
School Code."
The Senate Education Committee will hold its first hearing on
the matter Thursday and follow with a second session a week
later. "We want to hear from the trenches," Mr. Kuipers said
in explaining that the hearings will be open for testimony by
officials from local districts and intermediate schools.
He said work would begin right after the first hearing if
schools make suggestions that should be taken seriously.
Some changes may be politically difficult, Mr. Kuipers added.
He said some complaints that have surfaced already include
removing the requirement for instructional days since the
state mandates the number of hours of instruction in a year.
An early retirement program would allow some districts with a
roster of very experienced teachers to replace them with
younger teachers, thus paring payroll costs. Other areas for
review, Mr. Kuipers said, include the role of ISDs to
determine if some could be consolidated or if the existing
ones could provide more services to achieve economies of
scale, and state's testing requirements to see if the Michigan
Educational Assessment Program, used to meet federal
accountability requirements, or other tests need to be
streamlined.
"We will take a look at anything that is brought to us, we
will brainstorm it and see where it goes," Mr. Kuipers said.
"Our goal is that because we can't send more money to schools,
we can create a system where they can get the most bang for
the buck."
The first hearing will be at 2 p.m. Thursday in Room 210 of
the Farnum Building in Lansing.
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STATE RELEASING FIRST
SCHOOL SAFETY REPORT
Gongwer News Service, February 24, 2003
The first statewide school safety
report will officially be released Tuesday. While the report
shows such statistics as 16,000 assaults, 375 bomb threats and
1,558 expulsions, officials said the report actually shows
that Michigan schools are relatively safe.
On the expulsions, for instance, Lani Gerst Elhenicky with the
Center for Educational Performance and Information, which
compiled the report, noted the 1,558 students expelled came
from a base of 1.7 million students.
"The number of crimes is actually relatively low and the
number of schools implementing safety practices is relatively
high," Ms. Elhenicky said.
But she said the report should be cause for thought among
school policy makers. "We would hope that school
administrators would take a closer look at what's going on in
their districts and ask themselves, 'What is this data telling
us?'" she said.
For CEPI's part, the goal is to improve both the quality and
quantity of the data for the next report, Ms. Elhenicky said.
She noted that about 98 percent of the school buildings in the
state provided information. But she said in some cases
information provided was incomplete, such as an expulsion
being recorded, but the reason for and final duration of the
expulsion being omitted.
Ms. Elheniky said the format of the report this year is also
somewhat difficult to wade through. "It's not really very
consumer friendly," she said.
The report, posted on the CEPI Web site, consists of three
Adobe Acrobat files, two Excel spreadsheets and an HTML file.
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U.S. SUPREME COURT
SHUNS DETROIT SCHOOL TAKEOVER CASE
Gongwer News Service, February 24, 2003
The state's takeover of the Detroit Public School district,
through which it installed an appointed reform board to take
the place of the elected board, withstood a challenge before
the U.S. Supreme Court, which refused on Monday to consider
whether the state acted illegally.
The 1999 state law creating the reform board provided for a
vote by residents in the district in April 2004 on whether to
return to the elected board.
The takeover had been challenged as a denial of the Voting
Rights Act because it affected minorities disproportionately,
in view of doing away with an elected board in a district that
is about 83 percent black. The Detroit branch of the NAACP had
joined in the suit asking the high court to hear the case.
The board, former Detroit Mayor Dennis Archer and the state
contended the change was driven by years of poor performance
by Detroit students on state tests and in graduation rates, as
well as other administrative shortcomings.
Governor Jennifer Granholm said she supports a voted school
board, adding, "The mayor and I have been having conversations
about this. ... I've been supportive of giving people back the
right to vote. Now that might be a modified board situation.
When that happens is all subject to discussion with the mayor
and those who are affected. But I think that Detroiters should
have the right to vote."
The law, creating a board that consists mostly of appointees
of the Detroit mayor, had been upheld last year by a unanimous
panel of the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals (Moore v.
Detroit School Reform Board, USCOA docket No. 00-2334)
and in 2000 by U.S. District Court Judge Nancy Edmunds.
The courts did not necessarily agree that the poor academic
performance was the fault of the elected board, but concluded
the Legislature was entitled to believe the appointed board
would be more effective. The appeals court also said while
citizens have a fundamental right to elect lawmakers, they do
not enjoy that right regarding officials who serve
administrative functions.
Former Governor John Engler had pushed for the reform board,
saying the elected board was unwilling or incapable of
improving poor academic performance. Toward the end of his
tenure, he also said he had concluded an elected board in
major cities cannot work successfully.
Sage Eastman, spokesperson for Attorney General Mike Cox whose
office defended the law, said, "It's good to have a final
resolution and now all parties can start to move forward."
Opponents of the law have vowed to make their views heard at
the ballot box when voters are allowed to exercise their right
to decide whether to return to the elected board.
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GRANHOLM SEES BOTH
GOOD AND RISK IN BUSH MEDICAID PROPOSAL
Gongwer News Service, February 24, 2003
WASHINGTON-President George W. Bush's proposal to reshape
dramatically the beleaguered Medicaid system, laid out with
new detail Monday, has received a "guarded" reaction from
Governor Jennifer Granholm.
Mr. Bush and U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy
Thompson huddled with the nation's governors, meeting here for
the National Governors Association, to make the case for their
plan to cure the ailing joint state-federal health care
program for the poor. Mr. Thompson is seeking to have the plan
signed into law this year.
States across the country, including Michigan, have seen their
budgets crippled in large part by skyrocketing Medicaid costs.
The Granholm administration has said the only way to address
Medicaid costs in the existing system would be to either
freeze/cut reimbursement rates to health care providers,
restrict eligibility or eliminate optional services. Optional
services include prescription drug coverage, dental and
podiatry among others.
The Bush administration's plan would be voluntary and would
only affect optional services provided by the states, not
those services mandated by the federal government. Instead of
the current system, where states receive matching federal
money for every dollar they spend, states would be given a
fixed amount of money to pay for optional services.
That block of money (although the administration denies it is
a block grant) would grow by an average of 9 percent per year
for all states (it would vary from state to state based on a
formula) in the first seven years of the program.
States also would get an additional 2 percent increase in the
first year to aid the cost of creating a new optional services
program. But in the last three years of the program, they rate
of increase would drop to an average of 6 percent.
"It's less costly, more money up front, more options," Mr.
Thompson told the governors during a panel discussion.
Ms. Granholm said she sees benefits in flexibility and
additional money in the first year, but is concerned that
states would be in financial jeopardy if the Medicaid
population rises more dramatically than the forecasted
population growth that helps set the block of federal money.
"I like flexibility. I like to be able to craft our own
program," she said. "We're buying a risk regarding these
optional Medicaid populations. ... Is that worth the risk is
really the question we've got to evaluate. And that really
requires expert analysis. I've got to bring that home."
Two Democratic members of Congress participating in the panel
with Mr. Thompson, including U.S. Rep. John Dingell of
Dearborn, warned of the reduced funding in the later years of
the program. Mr. Dingell warned governors to read the fine
print of Mr. Bush's plan. And he criticized the reduced
increases in the program's later years.
"If you're looking at the future, you could say, 'I better be
careful,'" he said.
U.S. Sen. John Breaux (D-Louisiana) said it is "absolutely
essential" to fix Medicaid, but sees problems in the Bush
plan.
"The good news is we're going to give you a lot more money.
The bad news is we're going to take it away from you after a
period of time," he said. "I don't want to be around the last
three years because the cuts are going to be a lot bigger than
the seven years of increases."
But Mr. Thompson said funding would continue to grow in the
eighth through 10th years of the program at an average of 6
percent a year. "If this passes, I can't imagine any state
that wouldn't take it," he said.
The governors established a Medicaid task force to work with
the administration on drawing up a plan.
Connecticut Governor John Rowland, a Republican, said
governors should be glad the administration is prioritizing
Medicaid and recognize they will have the opportunity to shape
it. Mr. Rowland said governors could use the first seven years
of the program planning reform for the final three years when
funding increases will drop.
"My hope and dream is that the plan-which is a work in
progress-becomes our plan," he said.
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