Between securing $275 million in tax cuts for small businesses, $400 refund checks for every Michigan driver, and expanding low and no-cost childcare to 150,000 kids, Governor Whitmer has worked with anyone to cut costs for working families throughout her first term. Yesterday, she demonstrated her commitment to delivering more wins for Michiganders with a proposal to suspend the state sales tax on school supplies, a move that would immediately “lower costs for parents, teachers, and students.”

Despite the much-needed relief Whitmer’s proposal would provide to Michigan taxpayers, DeVos sellout Tudor Dixon immediately criticized the cost-cutting idea to help students and parents because it doesn’t fit into her special interest, wrong-for-Michigan agenda that shortchanges students, parents, and teachers. 

Dixon backed a plan to cut public education funding by up to $500 million annually and sell public schools for parts, while diverting resources into private schools-turned corporate tax havens. 

In step with Betsy DeVos who said abolishing the Department of Education should be a pillar of the GOP platform, Dixon also wants to do the same in Michigan and kneecap public education by rewriting our state’s constitution to allow public funding to be siphoned to private schools. These unsustainable cuts come on top of the $3.5 billion she has vowed to indiscriminately slash from the School Aid Fund.

Meanwhile, Governor Whitmer’s cost-saving proposal is just the latest investment she’s made into future generations of our workforce.

Last year, Governor Whitmer secured a bipartisan $17.1 billion dollar public education budget that completely closed a decades-long state funding gap between school districts, and made the “largest investment in PreK-12 schools in state history” — all without raising taxes.

Governor Whitmer recently signed a historic, bipartisan $19.6 billion School Aid budget. This massive win for working families builds on per pupil investment gains, closes pandemic learning gaps, and retains teachers in their own communities. Additionally, she has tripled the number of reading coaches, helped reduce class sizes, and closed the school funding gap.

As part of the new bipartisan budget, Whitmer recently signed the highest per-pupil state funding in Michigan history – $9,150 for every kid, in every district with a $450 increase. She negotiated resources to recruit more teachers, increase mental health care, improve school facilities, boost “career and technical education programs by 27 percent,” and expand before and after-school programming as well as free tutoring. She secured hundreds of millions of dollars to help schools build new classrooms, labs, and libraries and more on top of that to support every single school with safety initiatives.

MDP spokesperson Rodericka Applewhaite issued the following statement:

“Tudor Dixon is so wrapped up in doing the bidding of Betsy DeVos, and special interests that she can’t even see a solution that will give immediate relief to Michigan students, parents, and educators. This is only the latest example of Governor Whitmer’s commitment to ensuring our state produces the most competitive workforce for generations to come. That’s the leadership our working families deserve, not an extremist that will pawn off their dollars to unaccountable institutions.”

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