This is the second time we have addressed this issue, which we feel is necessary because of the barrage of negative attack ads that continue on television claiming the Gov. Rick Snyder cut $1 billion from K-12 school funding.

We may even be guilty of confusing the issue ourselves when we ran a story on page one Oct. 18 with a headline stating, “The State of Michigan has cut education spending by 9.5 percent.”

The study referred to in our story went back to 2008. The information was correct because spending was cut from 2008 to 2010, but that was before Snyder became governor. After Snyder became governor K-12 funding has shown growth every year and yes funding for K-12 education did increase by over $1 billion dollars.

We checked in with the non-partisan Michigan Senate Fiscal Agency. It shows K-12 funding in the 2010-2011 fiscal year – Granholm’s last budget – was $10.8 billion. That amount improved to $11.1 billion in fiscal year 2011-2012, which was Snyder’s first budget.

In the 2012-2013 fiscal year, the amount increased to $11.2 billion. In fiscal year 2013-2014, it increased again to $11.5 billion and in the 2014-2015 fiscal year, K-12 funding increased to $12.1 billion.

We agree with other newspapers including The Detroit Free Press in a piece that ran Tuesday titled, “Fact check: Shinning some light on school funding debate” that said that Schauer’s claims that Snyder cut $1 billion from education since he took office false. Snyder’s claim that he increased state K-12 spending by $1 billion is true.

The numbers above, which can be viewed and verified, can be found on the Michigan.gov website. The information can be found on the non-partisan website for the Michigan Senate Fiscal Agency, which shows the actual K-12 funding numbers.

We also understand that adding to part of the confusion over K-12 funding increases comes from a significant amount of that money going to pay increased retirement cost for Michigan school districts.

That really is not a surprise when you realize in the MAPS district that close to 85 cents of every dollar goes to pay for wages and benefits. We believe that the teachers’ retirement pension is significantly under funded and there will be huge problems covering that cost in the future.

We want voters to be given accurate information when making their decision who to vote for when it comes to the governor’s race. We are not going to address all the claims in the negative ads, but we admit that we are very skeptical after following up on the K-12 school funding issue as to how accurate some of the other claims may be.

It should be noted that on Oct. 26, The Detroit Free Press, terming it a close call, endorsed Snyder for governor. We understand the close call part of the endorsement because it is a bit unusual for the Free Press to endorse a Republican candidate for governor.

This should be a wake up call for those that may have been influenced by the false claims in the negative political campaign ads regarding the governor’s race.