We are Broke! And so it is time to start thinking. (A Familiar Refrain!)

State’s busted education system is failing our children

STEPHEN HENDERSON EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR

   The beginning of the school year brought a flurry of pitiful stories about kids from Inkster, whose school district went broke and was shuttered by the state over the summer.

   Their scramble to find seats in other districts, and the attendant scramble by those districts to figure out how many kids were coming and where they might fit, was terribly chaotic. For the rest of the state, it should have inspired mortal embarrassment.

   This is the way to attack financial crisis? Kids should bear the consequences of bad decisions and poor planning by adults?

   The meltdown of Michigan’s scheme for financing schools is about to play out on a nuclear level, and the best we’ve done so far is to pass legislation that scatters children and families out of last-minute desperation.

   “Michissippi” is a cliché by now, and an unfair canard in many respects. But when it comes to our handling of school finance, I’m afraid the moniker fits.

   The only way forward here is leadership. So who’ll grab the reins?

   State Superintendent Michael Flanagan told the Legislature last week that the finance picture for school districts worsened over the summer. Two districts were dissolved under the new law — a solution only in the most draconian sense. Even some of the districts that absorbed children from the shuttered jurisdictions are now facing deficits.

   Statewide, 50 districts are unable to balance their books, and some are on a path for more imbalance, not less.

   The problems are many. Start with the high number of school districts we have in Michigan (more than 500, with student population declining precipitously over the last decade) but don’t forget to count high pension and retiree health care costs and gross inefficiencies.

   Schools have the same problem in Michigan as other local governments: We either have to decide to pay more to maintain all the government we have, or reduce it to match the state’s smaller economy.

   The point, however, is to make that decision in an orderly way, through careful consideration and proposal. It’s derelict to let districts struggle, run out of money, then face the guillotine from the Legislature. It’s barbaric to force children to suffer through that.

   Flanagan is actually one of the few people charting a clear course forward. Last spring, he proposed turning administrative services (busing, food, etc.) over to intermediate school districts, leaving locals to manage academics. It’s a hybrid of an even better idea: a county-based school system, which would reduce the number statewide to 83.

   Flanagan will ask the Legislature to pilot his hybrid program this year, but legislators and Gov. Rick Snyder would be smart to take the discussion further.

   Michigan could get by, surely, with 83 school districts, and it would save tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars. Someone will need to champion that idea, though: Draw up the necessary legislation and sell it statewide as a solution to collapsing school finances.

   But this also is a state where people adore hyper-local government. If we want to maintain more than 500 school districts, we need to talk about how to pay for that. It won’t happen in an environment in which tax cuts are the limit of the Republican Party’s financial agenda, and it can’t happen while promises to retirees are uncapped and unmanageable. Again, if we need to raise a pile of new taxes to pay for the school systems we have, someone needs to lead the argument to do it.

   The way Michigan is handling this now is ham-handed and half-baked.

   We can do better. The state’s kids deserve it.

   Stephen Henderson is editorial page editor for the Free

   Press and the host of “American Black Journal,” which airs at 1p.m. Sundays on Detroit Public Television. Follow

   Henderson on Twitter @ShendersonFreep, or contact him at 313-222-6659 or shenderson600@freepress.com  .