LANSING —The House passed Senate Bill 574 today, which will allow charter schools to siphon off regional school millage dollars approved by voters. In response, state Rep. Vanessa Guerra (D-Saginaw), issued the following statement
“Ensuring that our students get a good education is one of the most important tasks that we have. That is why I could not support a proposal that takes tax money away from our public school classrooms and sends it to for-profit charter schools as Senate Bill 574 does. Local voters support tax millages because they want that money spent in their local public schools for the benefit of their children. SB 547, however, would send some of that money to for-profit charter schools, where it could instead go to the CEO who runs that charter school. With public schools, taxpayers know where their money goes because public schools are transparent and share that information with residents. For-profit charter schools do not operate under that same transparency, so residents may never know how their tax dollars are spent, and that is unacceptable.”