Credit Dustin Dwyer / Michigan Radio
Tuesday afternoon in the library at East Kentwood High School, Governor Gretchen Whitmer sat at a table surrounded by students and signed a statewide education budget bill 27 years in the making.
The bill calls for $17.1 billion in spending on preschool-12 schools in Michigan in the upcoming year, an increase of $1.6 billion compared to last year, with no increase in taxes.
The bill also guarantees each school district will receive at least $8,700 in funding per student from the state. And, for the first time since 1994, all public school districts will get the same minimum funding.
“We’ve been chasing this goal longer than any of these students have been alive,” Whitmer said, nodding toward the students gathered in the East Kentwood library. “Today we get to realize it.”