The Middle Column
No side. Just the record.
No side taken · Sources attached · Corrections public
Brief MC-0003 · Version 2.0 draft
Filed under: Money and taxes. Entered by the Clerk. Stamped: record checked, October 26, 2026.
“Why should the Christian and homeschool parents pay for public school education? Who helps them pay their tuition or homeschool costs?”
Quoted exactly as posted, Michigan, October 2026.
The millage is only a renewal of the existing rate, and voting no cuts the schools' operating money, which the state will not replace.
This claim circulates in many wordings, so it is stated in its common form, without quotation marks. Quotation marks in this brief mean exact, sourced words.
What follows is the record underneath both claims.
The record, in brief: The levy is a renewal of the same 18 mills in place since 1994. It is paid by businesses, rental property, and second homes, and it is not charged on primary residences or qualified farmland. Michigan's 4th-grade reading rank is 44th, and its spending is $18,314 per pupil, which is 19th in the nation, above the middle rather than near the top.
What is true in the first claim: Michigan's 44th place in 4th-grade reading is a real failure, and voters are entitled to demand better for the money.
What is true in the second claim: the renewal mechanics are as stated, and the figures in this argument come from public sources, not from the schools.
The first claim is quoted word for word from a statement in circulation in Michigan in October 2026, and the spelling and punctuation are the writer's own, because a quotation in this brief is a promise that the words are exact. The writer asked: "Why should the Christian and homeschool parents pay for public school education? Who helps them pay their tuition or homeschool costs?" The same statement holds that the millage taxes people who do not use the schools, that Michigan ranks near the bottom while spending near the top, that the money is mismanaged, and that homes are being lost over it. The second claim is stated in its common form, because it circulates in many wordings and no single person's sentence can honestly be quoted for it: the millage is only a renewal of the existing rate, a no vote cuts school operating revenue, and the state will not replace the money. Both claims surface every renewal cycle, at school board meetings and in comment threads across Michigan. This brief checks them against the record, figure by figure, and then leaves the part that is genuinely debatable where it belongs, which is with the reader.
Underneath both claims sits one question, and it is what residents owe to a public school system they may not personally use, and what performance they may demand from it in return. That is a question about values, and reasonable people answer it differently. Who pays this specific levy is not a values question, and neither is whether the levy is new, or what the published scores and budgets say. Those are in the record, and the record is below.
The first claim holds on the reading scores, because 44th in 4th-grade reading, with about 45% of 4th graders below Basic, is a poor result, and it is the result this levy funds. The claim holds in a narrower form as well, because families who educate their children outside the public schools still help fund those schools, through the 6-mill State Education Tax that every Michigan property pays and through the state sources that supply roughly 80% of school funding. The claim breaks on this levy itself, because the 18 mills are not charged on primary residences or qualified farmland, and both are exempt from it. The claim breaks on novelty, because the levy is a renewal of a rate unchanged since 1994, and it is not a new tax or an increase. The claim breaks on spending, because Michigan's $18,314 per pupil ranks 19th in the nation, above the middle and not near the top. The figures in this argument do not come from the schools. The scores are NAEP's, the spending figures are the Census Bureau's, the funding levels are the House Fiscal Agency's, and the foreclosure data is ATTOM's, and the data is already public.
The second claim holds on the mechanics it states. The levy is a renewal of the same 18 mills in place since 1994. A no vote reduces the district's operating revenue, and the state does not replace the reduction. A district that does not levy the full 18 mills does not receive its full foundation allowance. The claim breaks at the word "just," because a renewal describes the rate, and it does not answer the performance question the record raises: 44th in 4th-grade reading, with about 45% of 4th graders below Basic, is a legitimate grievance on its own terms, and $18,314 per pupil is a substantial sum that residents are entitled to examine. The claim also breaks if the renewal is heard as costless, because it is not costless to its actual payers. Businesses, landlords, and second-home owners pay real money under it, about $1,800 a year on a property with a taxable value of $100,000.
Strip both claims down and they share a skeleton. This levy funds the daily operation of the public schools. Its results are published, and they are mixed, with one poor ranking and three in the middle of the states. And the levy continues only because voters renew it, which is the accountability mechanism Proposal A built in. The record answers what the levy is and what the scores are. Who should pay for the schools is the actual debate, and it cannot be settled by a dataset, including this one.
$0. The first claim is argued as if the levy lands on the family home. The second claim is argued as if the family home were what a no vote protects. The measured amount a primary homeowner pays toward this levy is $0, because the levy is not charged on primary residences. The argument the record leaves is narrower: whether businesses, landlords, and second-home owners should keep funding school operations at a rate set in 1994, in light of the 2024 reading scores.
The factual part is already settled, because the documents are public and cited above: the rate, the payers, the exemptions, the scores, the spending rank, and what a no vote does. What the record cannot settle is whether residents who do not use the public schools owe support to them anyway, and whether a 44th-place reading rank should cost a district its operating renewal. Those are values and performance judgments. They belong to the reader, and the ballot is where they are decided.
Per-pupil figures are statewide averages, and district-level spending and taxable values vary. The $1,800 example uses a round taxable value for illustration; the formula is the fact, not the example.
Michigan district millage FAQs (Fruitport, Oakridge, Hanover-Horton) · Michigan Treasury exemption guidance · NAEP 2024 · U.S. Census Bureau, FY2024 Annual Survey of School System Finances · Michigan House Fiscal Agency (FY2026 budget; FY2027 enacted budget summary) · ATTOM foreclosure report (Aug 2026). Receipt Pack MC-0003 available on request.
You can debate what to do about the facts here. The facts are not the debate.