LANSING, Mich., June 11, 2025 — House Democrats unveiled their vision for the School Aid Fund budget Tuesday afternoon during a publicly accessible press conference, in an effort to jumpstart budget negotiations ahead of the July 1 statutory deadline for their completion. The budget recommendations included a record $24 billion for schools while protecting critical funding components like universal free meals, special education funding, transportation for rural school districts and at-risk funding. At the time of the Democrats’ proposal, House Republicans had yet to produce one of their own.

“At my core, I’m a Team Michigan guy, and I will work with anyone whose genuine goal is to make life better for the people of this state,” said state Rep. Alabas Farhat (D-Dearborn), ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee. “But until late last night, we were the only body in our chamber at the negotiating table. The clock is ticking and we have to do something real for these budgets, otherwise it isn’t Republican or Democratic legislators who are going to suffer; it is Michigan kids. We have a strong vision for our students and schools, and we’ve got the math to back it up. That’s work worth defending, and we plan to do it.”

The majority party in each chamber has been expected to propose a budget for public debate and negotiation months before the deadline, which was instituted to provide consistency and stability for schools, local governments and other key public services heavily funded by state dollars when planning for the upcoming fiscal year. In an abnormal deviation from procedure, Matt Hall and the Republican caucus were not able to produce a draft budget until after House Democrats introduced theirs, waiting to make it publicly available until the middle of Tuesday night.

“We’ve been working with teachers, school administrators, education professionals and the families of our state to develop a budget that reflects their needs and priorities and invests in things that will actually help to improve our schools,” said state Rep. Carol Glanville (D-Walker), former teacher and ranking Democrat on the House K-12 Education appropriations subcommittee. “It is telling that we could unveil our collaboratively-crafted budget in a public forum, and they had to wait until the cover of darkness to begin such a rushed process.”

Funding eliminations outlined in the Republican middle-of-the-night budget include:

  • removal of universal free meals, despite overwhelming support and need
  • removal of early literacy grants, coaches, and instructional time, despite ongoing Republican complaints about Michigan literacy scores
  • instructing the Michigan Department of Education to withhold 20 percent of funding for any school that teaches the objective history of discrimination against women or people of color, or has multi-stall unisex bathrooms that are often critical for disability accessibility
  • shifts millions of dollars in funding away from schools and kids into the General Fund, for currently undisclosed reasons

“Our schools were underfunded for years, and the decline in test and reading scores we’re seeing is a tragic consequence of that,” said state Rep. Regina Weiss (D-Oak Park), former teacher and chair of the House Appropriations School Aid subcommittee in 2023 and 2024. “House Democrats passed two budgets last session aimed at digging our schools out of the hole Republican leadership during the Snyder administration tried to bury them in, but it’s going to take a long time to undo that damage. Our budget proposal this year could have continued moving us in a better direction, and it’s embarrassing that House Republicans have put forward a budget that would bury us even deeper than where we started.”

###