A new report says it costs at least 96 hundred dollars to properly educate a student in Michigan’s public schools.
The exact number is nine thousand five hundred and fifty dollars. The state’s current minimum is almost two thousand dollars less than that.
The report also puts numbers to the costs of transportation, special education, and educating students in small, rural districts. The goal is to create an individualized per-student school funding formula, says Bob Moore of the School Finance Research Collaborative.
“We need a system that responds to the needs of each child.”
The report was commissioned by business and education groups.
Now, it’s up to the Legislature to decide whether to tackle the first big school funding overhaul in almost 25 years.