(Source: MIRS.news, Published 08/29/22) Differences in education policy between Republican gubernatorial candidate Tudor Dixon and legislative Democrats were highlighted during the Republican Red Wave Party following Saturday’s nominating convention.
During Dixon’s Red Wave Party speech, she talked about conversations with other elementary parents. Dixon has two children of her own going into 4th grade, and she recalled speaking with a mother of a fourth-grade son.
The two were talking about the crucial point that children learn how to read, and Dixon repeated the phrase, “Kindergarten to third grade, learning to read. Third grade on, reading to learn.”
But she said this mother was struggling to help her son catch up after pandemic school closures resulted in him struggling to progress with reading. Dixon said the child was falling behind after “our kids were out of school for almost two years.”
When telling the story of the mother, who spent nights learning alongside her son, Dixon asked, “What is happening to the kids whose parents can’t be with them every night?”
She criticized Gov. Gretchen Whitmer for cutting a proposed addition from the 2021 K-12 education budget that would have allocated $155 million in reading grants for Grand Valley State University to administer to parents, who could then apply for $1,000 scholarships for catalogue reading programs.
The program was described as a “voucher” program by the opposition, which included school advocacy groups, and Whitmer line-item vetoed it after the Michigan Education Association (MEA) and statewide associations for superintendents and school boards requested that she cut it out.
But Dixon called the Whitmer veto a lost opportunity to have reading scholarships “for every one of our kids,” with loud boos from the crowd in response.
“She had the opportunity to pass a bill that would have allowed those students to have that state assistance to get them back on track,” Dixon said. “But she vetoed that.”
On her website, Dixon listed a similar program at the top of her list of education priorities that would fund 25 hours of tutoring in reading and math for every student in Michigan using part of the $6 billion in federal COVID-19 pandemic relief.
She also highlighted preservation of parents’ rights, improving civic, financial and constitutional literacy and “banning born boys from playing on girls’ teams in school-sanctioned, gender-specific sports.”
She also has plans to allow parents to decide where per-pupil public school funding goes, whether to a public school or a private alternative.
Dixon said it’s time to get a mom and dad who care about Michigan kids in office, referencing herself and the recently chosen lieutenant governor nominee Shane Hernandez.
But during a Monday afternoon press conference, the Michigan Democratic Party, along with several educators, criticized Dixon’s education agenda and the policies they say would defund public schools.
Rep. Julie Brixie (D-Meridian Township), who spoke at the event, said Dixon's plan would lead to federal dollars funding private and religious education that “not every student is eligible for."
“Her plan is to divest millions of dollars away from the most vulnerable students that we have and direct them towards these high-tuition private schools,” Brixie said.
Brixie, raised as the daughter of two teachers, married a teacher and has a child in education, said the diversion of funding from public schools could result in $500 million of taxpayer money being “funneled into private institutions.”
“That’s after the governor has worked so hard through all of these things that have happened with the pandemic to take really big strides,” she said, “to finally level the playing field and ensure that all students, no matter where they live, get that same base level of education funding, and Dixon wants to undo all of that.”
In contrast, Brixie said Whitmer has broken records with four years of the largest investments in K-12 education.
“As kids are heading back to school this week, they're heading back to additional school counselors, nurses and social workers,” Brixie said, “and for schools who need it the most, they're going to have access to more mental health services than ever before because of the governor's record setting budget.”
Brixie ended on recollections of when Michigan used to be a top-10 state for education, “but after two decades of not funding education properly, we really have fallen very low.”
“We have a lot of work to do to catch up,” she said.
