Dear Mr.

Good morning!

My name is Xinxin Zhang. I’m a graduate student at Oakland University in educational leadership
program. I have my internship at North Hill Elementary for almost two years and Mr. Murphy is my
mentor. We are learning about school finance this semester. I found that there are some problems that the
state is not funding the public schools enough. So I want to write this letter to let you know more about
public school funding.

I choose to write to you because Mr. Murphy told me that you are very supportive of public schools. I
believe that an educational advocate is a person who believes and fights for social justice and educational
equity among all students and students support services (stakeholders and education system) to ensure
that every child should receive enough resources they need to reach their 100% potential. I also believe
that, as a religious leader, your advocacy could help to make changes to public education and to help
other people to know more and support public education.

Before Proposal A was passed, it was the local revenue that support each local public schools, which
made it not equitable for those poor districts. When Proposal A was passed in 1994, it aimed to reduce the
gap between poor districts and wealthy districts. It also aimed to ensure a stable increase of funding for
public schools. It worked well at the beginning, the state collected revenue and allocated the money to
different district according to their different situation.

However, problems appeared during the economic crisis in year 2002-2003. According to the research by
Kearney, the tax structure under Proposal A is more volatile over the economic cycle. Because most of
the public school funding relies on sales tax, the state could not keep the same increase as previous years
in funding public schools. Things were even worse during the economic breakdown in year 2008 that the
state reduced $470 per pupil during the crisis which it has not caught up even until now. According to a
new analysis by Michigan State University, twenty-five years after Michigan voters approved Proposal A,
Michigan ranks last among the 50 states in funding growth for public education.

Thus, with such limited funding and resources, supporting poor students and students with special needs
is much difficult. Once I interviewed the director of financial service from Rochester, he told me that
because the fund for special ed students is not enough, they have to move money from general fund to
provide basic support for those students. Based on the Collaborative Report last year, the basic per student
fund should be $ 9,590 while Michigan levels at $8,409. Besides, according to the report, with different
percentage of poor and special ed student, the basic fund could add up to 200% which we are far below
the level.

Mr. Murphy also told me that North Hills only receives $35,000- $45,000 (according to the enrollment)
each year for the building fund which is impossible to make big improvement to the school with such
limited fund as he has to spend about half of the money on basic supplies like copy paper. It is the same
with the what we read in class that schools make very few decisions about resource use as more than 80%
of the district funding goes to salaries and benefits.

As a result, it becomes more and more difficult for public schools to support every single student
according to their need with such limited funding and resources. So I hope you could know that public
schools are having a tough time and support our public education.

My recommendation is that first, the tax structure should be more stable. It relies on sales tax too much
that when the economy going down it will influence the funding for public schools a lot. Secondly, as
there is not enough resources for poor students or students with special needs, there should be extra fund
for those students. I believe when the community and schools work together, we could make it better to
support our kids.

Thank you so much for your time. If feasible, I would love to hear feedback or thoughts from you.

Respectfully,

Xinxin Zhang