Michigan Legislation for School Dissolution Aims at 2,500 Students or Less (Update: Pontiac @5,000)

House panel OKs bills that could dissolve districts

By Kathleen Gray Detroit Free Press Lansing

   The Michigan treasurer and state superintendent of schools could unilaterally dissolve insolvent small school districts under a pair of bills that were passed late Wednesday by the state House of Representatives’ Education Committee.

   The bills — passed mostly on party-line votes with Democrats opposed and Republicans in favor — were introduced last week by Reps. David Rutledge, D-Ypsilanti, and Bill Rogers, R-Brighton. They would give the authority to dissolve a financially insolvent school district that has 2,500 students or less. Currently, that would capture the Buena Vista and Inkster school districts, but not Pontiac, which has about 5,000 students.

   A district could only be dissolved if it failed to produce a viable plan to eliminate a deficit, if it didn’t produce a deficit elimination plan at all, or if the district was unable to provide services to students.

   The issue became critical this year after the Buena Vista district was forced to close its doors for two weeks in May because it didn’t have enough money to operate. Across the state, 55 districts currently are operating with deficits.

   Students from a dissolved district would be assigned to one or more nearby districts. And a form of the dissolved district would remain intact to collect revenue from the local millage to pay debt. Language that would have required the receiving school district to hire any employees from the dissolved districts was stripped out of the bill.