Michigan gave schools $224M for infrastructure, but they need billions
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In July, Michigan awarded 31 school districts a total of $224 million to fix aging boilers, air conditioning, electrical systems and a building's leaky roof.
For one district, the money represents "a major game changer" that allows it to address needed infrastructure repairs without asking voters to raise their taxes with a bond on the November ballot, an increasingly difficult route for schools.
However, the $224 million is just 16.5% of what districts across the state had requested, and that $1.8 billion ask, the Michigan Department of Education said in its news release, falls short of the estimated $23 billion in repairs that Michigan public schools need.
The gap between need and available funding has a lot to do with how Michigan schools typically get infrastructure money. Michigan is one of eight states where the primary funding source for school infrastructure is bonds, according to the Education Commission of the States, a national organization funded by states that tracks legislation and policy changes.
Across the country, states are the largest funder of a K-12 district's overall operations, said Chris Duncombe, a senior analyst with the organization. But "looking at capital school construction projects, that's a different story," he said.
"Eighty percent of funds come from the local level, with states doing 17% and the federal government 3%. So the states play an important role, but a much smaller role than what they do on overall operational support for schools. A caveat being that there's wide state-to-state variation."
In Michigan, the state's portion has been almost nothing, according to the 21st Century School Fund, a nonprofit that focuses on modernizing public schools. From the 2014 through 2023 fiscal years, the organization found that Michigan districts paid 98% of their infrastructure costs, with the remaining 2% coming from the federal government.