Every student from every background, in every community deserves the tools and the resources they need for a successful education.
Governor Gretchen Whitmer, though, disagrees.
She’s vetoed a set of bills that would have empowered Michigan’s kids with up to $500 million a year in additional funding for things like Wi-Fi, textbooks, tutors, reading coaches, and transportation to school.
Parents asked Whitmer to help their children. The Governor ignored parents and slashed education funding for more than one million Michigan students.
There’s encouraging news, though. Michigan parents aren’t taking Whitmer’s attack lying down.
Already a petition effort is underway to give parents a voice and to give their kids options. A new website, LetMIKidsLearn.com, has all the details.
Parents are leading the charge. They’re fighting for their kids. We are honored to fight alongside them every step of the way.
Beth DeShone
Executive Director, Great Lakes Education Project
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Families are checking the menus, thawing the turkey, and doing last minute shopping.
Thanksgiving is just days away, and parents have a lot to be thankful for. We’ve got a lot of work to do, too.
Lawmakers have gone on recess for hunting and Thanksgiving dinner, but they didn’t leave parents empty handed. They approved sweeping legislation to invest up to $500 million in our kids by equipping parents with student opportunity accounts.
That’s great news and significant progress. It’s the kind of support parents have been clamoring for since well before the pandemic. It’s support that’s more desperately needed now than ever, as school lockdown orders, an accelerating mental health crisis, and years-worth of lost learning take their toll on our kids.
We’re thankful men and women in Lansing stood up for these students.
Governor Gretchen Whitmer was less enthusiastic. She vetoed the bills quietly on a Friday afternoon, stripping the new funds from our kids and leaving parents again desperately in the lurch.
When it comes to their kids, though, parents never give up.
At the Great Lakes Education Project, we’re thankful for every one of your kids. And we’re thankful for you. We’re thankful for the ways you fight for your children. We’re thankful for your willingness to demand the best for each and every one of them. We’re thankful for the innumerable ways you support your kids every moment of every day.
There’s an old cliché that says our children are our future, and it’s true.
It’s also true that it’s a future you’re molding one precious moment at a time.
Thank you.
You can learn all about the fight to let Michigan kids learn, and even get involved.
Check out LetMIKidsLearn.com for all the details.