During Wednesday's budget presentation, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer trumpeted that her administration will have paid off $21 billion in public employees and school employee retirement debt by the end of Fiscal Year 2025, according to Department of Technology, Management and Budget numbers.

The Michigan Department of Education (MDE) would see a more than 74 percent drop in its funding between the current Fiscal Year and Fiscal Year (FY) 2025, under the Governor's proposal, as a sizable chunk of its authority is transferred to a brand new department.

While projecting the state's retiree healthcare system for teachers to be 100 percent funded in its next valuation, Gretchen Whitmer wants to redirect $670 million in otherwise additional public school retirement debt payments to other K-12 priorities for Fiscal Year (FY) 2025.

In the last four years, from the 2019-20 academic year that first faced COVID-19 through the recent 2020-23 school year, enrollment in Michigan's public schools fell by 62,243 students

Michigan's 1970 ballot proposal that banned the use of public money for private schools does not violate the rights of those attending religious-based schools, a federal court ruled today, as private school advocates suffered yet another judicial setback.