Legislative Update

Gov’s Budget Increases Core Funding, Creates New Accountability Program

Governor Whitmer has released her Executive Budget Proposal for the 2025-26 fiscal year. The proposal includes a 4.1% increase in the foundation allowance, which would bump the amount to $10,000 per pupil. The budget continues significant investments in student mental health, early literacy, and career readiness while also expanding free preschool access for all four-year-olds. A major new initiative in this year’s budget is the so-called SMART (Students, Metrics, and Results with…

Legislative Update

This Week in Politics in 5 Sentences (or Fewer)

It was a chaotic week of federal directives, including an executive order freezing federal education funding, which was temporarily halted by the courts and then further complicated when the White House rescinded the directive’s memo but clarified that the order itself remains in full force, leaving school leaders uncertain about potential long-term impacts on programs like school meals and Impact Aid (this blog post from AASA, which they have continued to update…

Legislative Update

New Education Laws from Lame-Duck 2024: What Principals Need to Know

Well, it took until late-January, but as the deadline for the Governor's review and signature came and went this past Wednesday, we finally got clarity this week on how the 2024 lame-duck session ended up…mostly (some exceptions may apply). So today, let us, at long last, dig into the new laws that came out of the 2024 lame-duck session. We are going to provide a bullet-point overview of each new set of…

Legislative Update

This Week in Politics in 5 Sentences (or Fewer)

The House’s failure to conduct an effective lame-duck session, which dominated political headlines in December, has now spilled into the new year—while, as we noted in our lame-duck recap, the Senate powered through a record-setting 29-hour final session and passed nearly 100 bills, the House completely botched its responsibilities on the back end, delaying presentation of those bills to the Governor until just last week, meaning we still don't have a complete…

Legislative Update

January CREC Shows Revenues, Balances Growing

The State Treasurer and directors of the House and Senate Fiscal Agencies met Friday to come to consensus on the revenue estimates that will be used to begin the state budget process for 2025-26 fiscal year. The short story: state revenues for last year and this year have been robust and higher than expected, exceeding projections from the May 2024 estimates by hundreds of millions. That means that the state is projected…

Legislative Update

MASSP’s 2025-26 Legislative Priorities

This past December, 319 principals—representing about 20% of MASSP's membership—participated in our biennial priority survey to identify the top policy priorities MASSP members want us to focus on for the upcoming legislative session. While the results show that all seven issues presented in the survey were viewed as important, three stood out as the clear front-runners. These top-ranked priorities will provide the focus for MASSP’s proactive advocacy efforts over the next two…

Legislative Update

2023-24 Legislature Ends Session with House Stagnation, Marathon Senate Session

The 2023-24 came to a close mid-afternoon on Friday, December 20, when the Michigan Senate finally adjourned after a record-setting session that lasted nearly 30 hours. In contrast, the House failed to get enough members in attendance to meet a single additional day during the final week of the legislative calendar after adjourning in disarray last week. The lack of session was despite action by Speaker Joe Tate to impose a Call…

Headlines, Legislative Update

This Week in Politics in 5 Sentences (or Fewer)

Almost 200 bills were reported out of committee in the Legislature this week…just sit with that a minute…ok, ready to move on, because we have miles to go before we sleep since that long list of bills includes…deep breath…SB 285 (mandatory kindergarten), SB 463 (FAFSA completion as a graduation requirement with various waivers), and HB 6255 (legislation to address lingering debt from the Detroit Public Schools takeover of a decade ago) which…

Headlines, Legislative Update

This Week in Politics in 5 Sentences (or Fewer)

NOTE: MASSP will be writing summary articles like this throughout lame duck, but we will be waiting to write more detailed analyses until we know which proposals become law. If you are looking for more information on a piece of legislation, we always link listed bill numbers to the Legislature webpage. You may also find additional details on some of these proposals in our 2024 Lame Duck Preview article. Lame duck has…

Headlines, Legislative Update

2024 Lame Duck Preview

With the election in the books, the Michigan Legislature returned to Lansing this week and dove headfirst into what could become a busy lame duck session. Both chambers seem determined, at least for now, to finish out the 2023-24 legislative session with a bang (all three remaining weeks of it…tick tock). The House and Senate Education Committees both met, though they were far from the only committees that had school-related legislation on…