Interview with Nick Ceglarek on the Fundamental Inequities of Public School Funding
Announcer: Welcome to Inside Michigan Education, a weekly show featuring interviews with community leaders, school administrators, school business officials, and individuals who are passionate about the future of Michigan Education. Now, here is your host for Inside Michigan Education, Rob Huisingh.
Rob Huisingh: Welcome to Inside Michigan Education. This week we are joined in the Foxbright Podcast Studio by Nick Ceglarek. Nick is the Superintendent of Fruitport Community Schools and he joins us today for part two of our series on the Fundamental Inequities in Public School Funding. Welcome Nick, it's a pleasure to have you on our show.
Nick Ceglarek: Thank you, Rob, it's a pleasure to be hare and talk a little bit about school funding and maybe some things that we can do to better the situation.
Rob Huisingh: Awesome. Nick, take a few minutes to tell us little bit about yourself and about Fruitport Community Schools.
Nick Ceglarek: Fruitport Community Schools is a school district of about 3200 students. We offer variety of programs and services like many of the great public schools that we have in the State of Michigan. We are located Northern Ottawa County, Southern Muskegon County. We have a wide range of five different zip codes. It's a unique situation but one that we love. We have located closed to the Muskegon Shoreline, Grand Haven Shoreline and we have a lot of great opportunities for our kids and enjoy the community very much. Prior to Fruitport Community Schools I was Superintendent of Baldwin Community Schools in Baldwin, Michigan in Lake County, and served there as Superintendent for two years and currently in my fourth year at Fruitport.
Rob Huisingh: Nick, in last week's interview we talked to Steve Cousins, we sort of covered the area that amazingly enough that not all school districts receive the same amount of money from the State, a funding grant, and in some cases the schools are receiving as much as twice or close to as much as twice as other school districts. Can you help us understand how schools were funded prior to Proposal A?
Nick Ceglarek: Prior to Proposal A, the majority of school funding came from local millages and property taxes. In fact in 1994, 55% of school funding came from local property taxes and in 1995 after the passage of Proposal A that was reduced to 19%. So, there was a mixed, a clear edict from the legislator to change the way we've done school funding. I think the purpose behind it was that the taxpayers, the citizens of the State of the Michigan were trying to find a different way to get out of the property tax. When assessments would go up their taxes would go up to a point where many people were making decisions on whether or not they could relocate or buy property because of or as a consequence of the property taxes. So, the legislators felt that they needed to and I think many of the citizens felt that they needed to do something different. So, that precipitated in July of 1993, the legislators basically eliminating local school property taxes. Now, in affect, what this did was it reduced $7 billion to our public schools and it forced the Legislature and the Governor to come up with an alternative way to find the public schools.
Nick Ceglarek: Interestingly, during that time I think Michigan was the spotlight of the nation because similar to what the legislatures did recently with eliminating the business tax without a replacement they had to work very diligently and swiftly to try to come up with something, and that's when a group of legislators really worked together by parts (ph) and fashion to try to come up with the solution and the solution, one of the solutions was something called Proposal A.
Nick Ceglarek: Now interestingly, Proposal A was a ballot initiative on a special election in March in 94, and if that had not passed there was an automatic legislation that would be enacted to fund the school, but it passed overwhelmingly by the citizens of the State of Michigan. Essentially, what Proposal A did was it transferred instead of property taxes funding the schools, it went to a sales tax and it actually reduced the income tax from 4.6 to 4.4, and it established a six-mill statewide educational tax, and that basically was the impetus behind Proposal A.
Rob Huisingh: So, prior to Proposal A, I am assuming that there was a wide disparity in the amount of money which any particular district would put into its public school because there is a wide disparity between the amount of taxes that you would have in the tax bases. Is that's correct?
Nick Ceglarek: That's exactly correct. I mean you can just think in your mind of two different communities, a community, maybe that's a rural community that doesn't have a lot business, maybe not a lot of residence, and what can be generated from a tax base in that community versus maybe a suburban community with wide array of residencies and businesses and what a property tax on that community can make. So, what we found is prior to Proposal A, we found funding was different for each of the schools. Some would receive a considerable amount $4,000 or $5,000 back at that time per student, some as high as even $8,000 or $9,000, and some would receive far less than that, $2,000 or $3,000 per student. So, this was an attempt to level the playing field.
Rob Huisingh: I understand and which is a noble cause. To what extent has Proposal A actually succeeded in leveling that playing field?
Nick Ceglarek: They've established a foundation, a base foundation amount that tried to create equity. In doing so, they established what a base amount would be but that base amount could not have been -- it wasn't possible to put it at the highest funded districts. It would become too big of a burden for all of our taxpayers.
Nick Ceglarek: So, even with the onset we had a wide range of the majority of schools that were at this base amount and then there were other schools that already had a higher tax rate that were held harmless at that higher amount. So, you've started in 1994 and 95 with this gap already, and there has been in fact just recently some legislation in the School Aid Act that talks about trying to shrink that gap but the philosophical question out there is how do you do that? Do you do at the risk of those that are funded at the top, do you bring them down? Do you try to give their increments much smaller than the others? The way that they've decided to do it is what they call an 'Equity Payment', and those districts that are the base foundation amount get an equity payment to try to catch them up, but the reality Rob is, it's going to take years and lifetimes in order for that to happen with our current state I mean as...
Rob Huisingh: It surely is in the tax base yet.
Nick Ceglarek: ...and as my colleague Steve Cousins put it quite well. We literally have districts in the State of Michigan that are receiving over $12,500 close to $13,000 per pupil, and then the base foundation allowance of many of our districts are at $7,200. I know Steve illustrated how much that means for Reeths-Puffer. For Fruitport that's over $17 million annually. Jokingly we talked about what could you do with $17 million. Well, I'll tell you there are a lot of things you can do, lowering class size, offering extra programs, I mean things that can make a significant difference in the lives of our kids. It's difficult philosophically, because are we, as Michigan citizen is saying, that depending on where you live is how much we're willing to pay to educate your child. So, if you live in a fluent suburb that gets $13,000 a kid. That's more important than if you live in West Michigan where you only receive $7,000 a kid or $7,200. I mean that gets at the heart of some philosophical questions that I think, we as Michigan citizens, really need to take a look at.
Rob Huisingh: Well, it is interesting to me that with the advent of schools of choice and a certain amount of competition that you're talking about and saying that all schools need to be achieving similar levels of performance, and yet we just suppose that we're saying that, we're willing to pay some schools twice as much per student than others, and it's an interesting place to be...
Nick Ceglarek: It certainly is, and I think the best illustration of that what you talked about Rob is the struggle that a lot of urban school districts are going through. Here most of urban districts are receiving the base foundation amount excluding a few, and because of that there are counterparts at times in the suburbs, if you will, are receiving a greater amount per student can maybe offer more programs because of that, and then when you throw in the mix of schools of choice and some parents choosing to send their students to maybe the suburban schools. Now, the urban districts and other districts have less money to operate, because we're based, our foundation is, on the kids that we have in our schools. So, it's almost a death spiral because then what has to happen is you have to cut programs to meet budgets, and when you cut programs you have the potential of losing more kids, and it really is a struggle for certain districts with that respect.
Rob Huisingh: Well, in the business community, when you look at purely a business competition base, we would say that, well, some businesses are meant to succeed and they succeed because they're doing well, and they're attracting people and some are meant to fail, but I think that option of allowing things to fail is probably not a very good option at all.
Nick Ceglarek: Well, so many people that I've talked with, talk about that business model, and going into a conversation it doesn't take long to turn it around in this respect.
Nick Ceglarek: Let's suppose you're making widgets and you're starting to produce widgets and you find out from your suppliers or the people that you're trying to sell that you need more of a different quality to make that widget. So, you go and you get a better product to start making those widgets. Schools, and I wouldn't change this for the world, except all and we educate all, we have no control over the product that we get in raw materials.
Nick Ceglarek: I am excited to be a part of the profession that takes all and list them up. I would say to the business owners that if you have an opportunity to see the incredible gains - now, they may not be the gains that the other districts are saying and in part it may be because of the product, the students that are coming in - but when you look at some of these urban districts and some districts that are struggling and some of the incredible things they're doing with all children, it's truly phenomenal. I feel that we as an educational community really need to support all of our public school. So, you hear me talking a lot about the urban schools but as our public schools are sought we all are sought at, and we really have to be cognizant of that. As I indicated Fruitport probably is more on the suburban side, and in a lot of respects, has a lot of those things that maybe others are looking for or would like, minus the funding, because we're one of the lowest funding districts as well, but it really is something to be cognizant of all of us.
Rob Huisingh: Others efforts to change the way that public schools are funded today.
Nick Ceglarek: I think there are. I indicated that in the recent legislation of the School Aid Act they're looking at a catch-up provision trying to provide equity. Again, we talked about that isn't enough but there's something there. The other issue that we really haven't talked about, we've been talking on the operating side of school districts, but the other side is really the infrastructure, and currently the way that the system works is the same as it did prior to Proposal A and that's going out to the voters on property taxes and the tax base, and asking the voters to approve bond proposals.
Nick Ceglarek: The problem is in this respect we have a system that is still based on the tax base of the community. So, when you have a situation where there is a suburban district that maybe has a tax base of 100, 200, 300 times more than a rural -- I don't want to say it's easier because it's never easy to pass a bond, but to generate the amount of funds necessary to keep up with the infrastructure needs, it is very problematic and sometimes impossible in some of these districts. There has been a great report out by the Michigan State University Research Policy Center, and the title of that is 'Adequacy, Equity and Capital Spending in Michigan schools: The Unfinished Business of Proposal A'. What that report basically states is that there are two inequities, inequities in the wide variation and age and condition of the school facilities in certain districts, and the policies of the inequities about the property tax rates.
Nick Ceglarek: As you can imagine -- this is an actual quote that I wrote down from David Plank who is the Policy Director for MSU's Educational Policy Center, and what he said is that, "There is simply no other way to state it than to say that leaving the responsibility for capital spending at the local level violates the principle of adequacy and equity in Michigan's educational system." I mean it clearly put the State in there report, the State must get more involved with helping local districts with capital spending in order to insure Michigan children have equitable access to equitable educational facilities.
Rob Huisingh: Yeah, that certainly makes sense. Is there anything that we can do to general listeners?
Nick Ceglarek: First of all, I would ask the general listeners to get involved with their public schools. The reality of it is that most of the citizens in the State of Michigan do not have school aids children, but I think what we need to recognize is they are our future. Whether you have a school aids child or not, our economy, our future is based on their successes, and not just the successes of a few select districts but successes of all of our public schools.
Nick Ceglarek: So, I would say that they need to know about their public school. I would ask the citizens to understand some of these issues that we've talked about, and talk to the people that can make a difference. Who can make a difference? Our legislators in Lansing, our Governor, those constituents, they represent us, and when we find that there are inequities in anything, specifically we're talking about public education but anything, we really need to voice our concern about those inequities and see what we can do as a State to better serve our children.
Rob Huisingh: Nick, I want to thank you for taking the time to be with us today, thank you for sharing both the information of your time and for everything that you do within Fruitport Community Schools.
Nick Ceglarek: Thank you Rob, I appreciate the opportunity.
Rob Huisingh: If you would like to contact Nick, he can be reached by telephone at (231) 865-3154, and also you can visit Fruitport Community Schools online at www.fruitportschools.net.
Rob Huisingh: Until next week this is Rob Huisingh with Inside Michigan Education.
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