The president of the Detroit Public School teachers union made what has now become a clichéd and erroneous claim when she said the state has been cutting money to state education.
Ivy Bailey, the interim president of the Detroit Federation of Teachers, wrote in a Jan. 15 column that appeared in The Center for Michigan’s Bridge magazine: "State lottery money for education just replaces (but doesn’t add to) state education funding. The state has been cutting school funding for years."
ForTheRecord says: State funding for K-12 schools has increased every year under Gov. Rick Snyder.
And the state lottery is a small percent of the total state funding devoted to education.
From 2007 to 2014, the lottery contributed between $701 million to $778 million a year to the School Aid Fund. In 2014, the lottery contributed $743 million to the School Aid Fund, which was $12.5 billion that year. That means the lottery money was only 6 percent of the entire funding for education in Michigan.
DPS received $7,599 per pupil in total state funding in 2010-11, which was Gov. Jennifer Granholm's last budget. In 2015-16, DPS is getting $7,711 per pupil in total state funding.
Michigan Capitol Confidential is the news source produced by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. Michigan Capitol Confidential reports with a free-market news perspective.
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