Robert McCann, Executive Director of The K-12 Alliance of Michigan, explained districts have utilized the influx of federal funds for programs and personnel for an array of wraparound services to support students’ unique academic and social emotional needs arising from the pandemic. The Alliance will be highlighting programs that support students' needs as models for the 'new normal', and advocating for state funding to meet that 'normal', in order to give students the best opportunities for success going forward. Website https://www.k12michigan.org
Robert McCann is the Executive Director of The K-12 Alliance of Michigan, which strives to be the statewide leader in education policy and advocacy to ensure every child in Michigan has equitable access to a quality education and the opportunity to succeed both in and outside of the classroom. Currently the organization represents districts in Wayne, Oakland, Macomb, Genesee, and St. Clair Counties, and is continuing conversation with other areas for potential partnerships and further expansion.
Responding to the challenges of the current school year Mr. McCann urged the school community as a whole, to focus solely on the best way to provide students a ‘normal’ school experience, laying aside the politics surrounding those discussions. From his viewpoint, “utilizing the guidance and directives of public health experts is essential for schools to offer in-person learning, keeping students in school where they learn best. Additionally if there is an outbreak, schools need the flexibility to shut school down for a period and continue offering learning remotely and third, schools need to have long term policies in place to support student recovery.”
Mr. McCann reflected on the impact of the uneven experiences students have had due to the pandemic, and how schools can best move forward. “As we bring them back to classrooms this fall we know it's not just about focusing on where they are academically, but where they are socially and emotionally in their own recovery process that's ultimately going to dictate how we can best help them get back on paths towards academic success. Schools play a unique role not just in academics, but in these students' lives and in their ability to overcome whatever obstacles they're facing at home, whatever obstacles they're facing in their social circles. That schools give them that support that they need to succeed overall in their growth is so critical to getting them back on that path to success going forward.”
Mr. McCann lauded the increased “funding from the federal stimulus packages, enabling districts to provide students a number of opportunities which they wouldn’t otherwise have, for the next two or three years. With the stimulus funding for programs we are looking at what wraparound services schools provide to address those unique needs of any individual student, as a model to demonstrate what normal could look like if we were funding schools properly in the first place.”
“It's about taking those services: getting reading coaches into younger kids' classrooms; getting tutors into school buildings; getting social workers into school buildings to help with those needs; and providing all of those wraparound services as the best chance we have to not only help these students that have been struggling over the last year and a half, but meet those unique needs of every student instead of just saying all students are the same and here's a funding plan that fits that.”
Mr. McCann noted, “if we can redefine what normal is over the next couple of years and then advocate for the funding to meet that normal, then I think we'll have done the best job we can to give these students the best opportunities possible going forward. The Alliance wants to show that if the state of Michigan were to make the type of investment that those federal stimulus dollars are making on an ongoing basis, the good we could be doing for students for generations to come. We are going to show what some of these programs look like over the next few years that could be invested in perpetually by the state. We're going to say this is exactly what we could be doing if the state adopted an SFRC (School Finance Research Collaborative) based formula.”
In terms of funding for programs, Mr. McCann is a strong proponent of the School Finance Research Collaborative recommendations. He pointed out the disparity between the current state funding formula, with its one size fits all, and the SFRC recommendation that provides funds based on the unique needs of the students in schools and districts, explaining that “it's treating every student as the same when we know that's not the case. What that means is that we are under-funding every student and not doing even the most minimal effort to meet the unique needs that many students have; these are special education students, English language learners, people that need extra reading help. We're not funding those programs correctly, so when schools implement those programs because they're necessary, that means we're ultimately pulling funding from every student, which under serves the entire student population of Michigan.”
Mr. McCann also commented on the state of the teaching profession in Michigan, which has been “impacted by chronic under funding of schools, a lag in pay, to not enough teachers being in classrooms, overcrowded classrooms, to not funding classrooms properly, as well as increasing the responsibilities of educators, as evidenced by decisions made by school officials who aren’t public health experts, about the conditions for students to return to school.” In response to the low number of students enrolled in schools of education across the state, and the rate of retirements accelerated by the pandemic, Mr. McCann asserted the need to look holistically as a state to address the status of the teaching profession. “The more we can be doing to say that Michigan is a state that is willing to invest in public education, that is willing to invest in the profession of educating students again, that's what's ultimately going to start this process of encouraging young students in high school and going into college to say that's the profession I want to get into again.”
Looking ahead, Mr. McCann advised, “the best thing we can be doing as a school community right now is highlight the good work that we're doing as students benefit from the new supports that are available: instituting new reading programs, tutoring programs, social programs to help students' emotional recovery. Let's highlight the success that some of these students are going to be having this year: recovering from the pandemic, getting caught back up to grade level, getting reintegrated in with social programs and having school dances again and just even some of those most basic of things, to remind people the integral role that schools ultimately play within their communities, because we need to be doing that, right now.”
In the short term, Mr. McCann insisted “the state and local health departments need to be stepping up and making and giving very clear direction to schools of what they need to be doing inside the classrooms, inside the school buildings to keep kids safe.”
In the longer term, Mr. McCann is adamant about showcasing the benefits to students of programs derived from the stimulus funding or risk losing the gains that will be made over the next two years with those additional resources, by returning to an old funding formula. “We need to have lawmakers start looking at how we can start fixing the funding formula again. Next year in the budget process, we are going to be pushing to make some of those significant changes away from the one size fits all formula, to meeting that SFRC based formula. That is going to be critical moving forward, or we’re missing this opportunity that we have in front of us.”
Website https://www.k12michigan.org
Bob Maxfield:
Welcome to Podcast for Leaderful Schools coming to you almost live from Oakland University, from the School of Education and Human Services and particularly the Galileo Institute, in Rochester, Michigan. This is Bob Maxfield and I'm joined by my ever spectacular co-host Dr. Sue Klein. Suzanne how are you today?
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Suzanne Klein:
I'm trying to be extra spectacular Bob, to keep up with the dialogue here.
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Bob Maxfield:
Well you do that, you do that well. Listeners know that for the last almost six months we've been exploring a theme that we call "the Great Reset". We've been talking about schools emerging from the pandemic, and what can we do better as we move ahead; what are the challenges facing us. When we started we were optimistic that we would be looking at more of a normal beginning of the school year, and as you'll see in the next few minutes that's not really the case.
Our guest today is Mr. Robert McCann. Bob McCann is the Executive Director of The K-12 Alliance which he will describe in a little bit. He's a long time political consultant; worked with the Michigan Senate staff and has worked in a variety of other offices in Lansing. He's a graduate in public administration from Michigan State University. So Bob welcome, we're delighted you're with us today.
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Robert McCann:
Thanks, I appreciate you guys having me. It's a nice opportunity to talk to you.
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Bob Maxfield:
Well let's begin with some insights into your background. What experiences and I alluded to them, but what experiences and training have prepared you to assume the role that you're currently in, which is an increasingly important role working with school districts in southeast Michigan?
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Robert McCann:
You kind of hit on a little bit of my background. I like to be upfront with all of my members and certainly all of your listeners that my background is not in public education. It is one that is of politics and government, and so you know I'm fortunate to work with a group of tremendously engaged superintendents who provide me with the educational background that I lack, and give me their thoughts and experiences to make up for frankly the background I don't have in public education but I come to this job from as you said, more of a politics and government background.
I spent about 20 years now working in Lansing politics and various government and campaign type roles. You know I started my career working under Governor Granholm doing public relations worked for the Department of Environmental Quality and then I went on to do some campaign work, and spent four years working in the Michigan Senate under now Governor Gretchen Whitmer, as both the Communications Director and then the Chief of Staff for the Senate Democratic Caucus.
And then went back into doing some consulting work and that ultimately led me to a conversation with the folks in southeast Michigan who were the superintendents at the time, to talk about this role that I'm in now, and ultimately they asked me to sign on and I did. It's been a wonderful three and a half years now of working on behalf of public education. It's been a wonderful experience and one that I'm proud to say I think the organization is continuing to get a little bit stronger as we go along, so that's ultimately what brings me here today.
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Bob Maxfield:
And I know from everything I've heard from the current superintendents they very much appreciate your sort of insider knowledge of what goes on at Lansing. That's really important and I believe you're also a registered lobbyist, which is helpful in that regard as well. So tell us a little bit about the Alliance; what is it; what's it in the process of becoming; and what are the unique challenges that face us right now?
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Robert McCann:
I think it started off as The Tri-County Alliance for Public Education, and it was really an effort by the superintendents in Wayne, Oakland, and Macomb County to say we need our unique voice in this conversation, meaning that there are other organizations out there that do a wonderful job of advocating for public education in general. I'm certainly not here to say anything different than that but, you know I think they recognize that there is a unique population of students in southeast Michigan.
Half of the students of Michigan are in southeast Michigan and they wanted to make sure that these schools that represent them have a unique voice in the policy and advocacy space, on behalf of those students. So they created TCA at the time as that entity, and really in the last I would say eight or nine years, sort of gave it a much more aggressive space to say we want to be not only a voice for just our districts, but we want to be the preeminent voice for public education in general in the state of Michigan, and really that's the space I've been trying to take the organization since I've been fortunate enough to be its Executive Director in the past few years, is say that yes, while we are a regional organization, we want to be the loudest voice in Lansing because there are so many challenges facing public education right now that we need to be stepping up and speaking out on behalf of them.
And then of course in the past year, we have physically expanded our role by breaking out of the of the tri-county region, adding in Genesee and St Clair Counties to our Alliance and becoming The K-12 Alliance of Michigan, and is one that we continue to talk to other areas about potential partnerships and expansion further. It's one that I think there's room for growth in, but ultimately we want our organization to be again the strongest advocate there is for public education in Michigan.
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Bob Maxfield:
As that strongest advocate, what do you see as two or three top priorities looking into the 2021-22 school year?
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Robert McCann:
Certainly, this is a school year that is unlike any other. You know last year superintendents were preparing their schools knowing that there was a chance that they were never going to be offering in-person learning throughout the school year, and this isn't that. But it's certainly not a normal school year either.
You know everyone's trying to bring students back and there's no question that that's going to happen, but there's a lot of unknowns in terms of whether that's going to continue that way, given where this pandemic stands right now, and particularly with the delta variant still spreading.
Certainly our priorities are getting first and foremost, the guidance and directive we ultimately need from public health experts to dictate how and when we can be offering in-person learning but also what we can be doing to best ensure we can continue keeping kids in classrooms going forward where we know they learn best.
Outside of that, it's making sure we have the flexibility that we need if there is an outbreak; if there is an order from a local health department for example, to shut school down for a period of time, that we have the flexibility in place to be able to continue offering learning remotely, and then third is making sure that we have the long term policies that are going to support the student recovery.
We know we have quite a bit of support from the federal stimulus packages that are going to give our students a number of opportunities they wouldn't otherwise have, for the next two or three years. What we want to show is that if the state of Michigan were to make this type of investment that those federal stimulus dollars are making on an ongoing basis, the good we could really be doing for students for generations to come.
There is a lot of work ahead for the upcoming school year, to say the least, but there's also some room to be optimistic about what we can do for students, even given some of these challenges that we're going to be facing.
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Suzanne Klein:
You've led nicely into the next area that we wanted to probe a bit with you with your last comments, Bob. Thank you for highlighting some of the concerns that superintendents and local districts are looking at right now, as students get ready to return or have already returned.
One of the things we know is this notion of "resetting" that Bob talked about earlier is key on people's minds. What have we learned? What are those lessons that we've learned; things that we would keep, things that we would change; things that we have now been more closely focused on, that were previously hidden? So I wonder if you would talk a minute with us about the department of lessons learned piece of the last months of this pandemic experience, and the lead up to the opening of school that's coming right away. What do you think has been learned during this time that will inform school districts as they open their doors again and get ready for students and staff to return?
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Robert McCann:
I think probably the most important lesson that anybody has learned in this process is that every student is unique, and their own needs and challenges are unique. You know, certainly as we shifted into remote learning over the past year, we knew that there were going to be struggles and some students did perfectly well with remote learning but a lot didn't, and it wasn't just because the lesson plans weren't as complete or the technical issues were too challenging to overcome, but that the situations they were in were often not conducive to learning, meaning their home lives, their social and emotional needs weren't being met.
So the understanding of just everything that goes into a student's success is not just what takes place in the books or in the lesson plans, but is really all of the wraparound services that a school normally can provide. It became missing in that standpoint, so as we bring them back to classrooms this fall, we know it's not just about focusing on where they are academically, but where they are socially and emotionally in their own recovery process that's ultimately going to dictate how we can best help them get back on path towards academic success.
Thankfully, you know we again have some of these federal stimulus dollars that are helping us bring in at least for the short term, additional tutors and reading coaches and social workers and things like that, that are going to be able to address some of those but really the most important thing I think that we're talking about as we bring these students back is being able to sit down one- on-one with these students and ask a question as simple as, 'How are you doing?' and the answer to that question is going to be unique to every student and ultimately going to help every superintendent, every principal, every teacher understand what we need to be doing for that student, to get them help and get them back on that path to success.
When we look back at the past year, as you asked the question of what have we learned, is just the unique role schools play not just in academics, but in these students' lives and in their ability to overcome whatever obstacles they're facing at home, whatever obstacles they're facing in their social circles, that we give them that support that they need to succeed overall in their growth is so critical and is going to be so important to getting them back, like I said back on that path to success going forward.
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Suzanne Klein:
You hit on that unique and very integral support role that schools play beyond the reading, writing, math, science, robotics, and other things that are the content pieces but it's developing the whole child. It's developing an educated person who's going to walk across the stage at graduation ready to take on whatever challenges they're going to identify as next steps for them.
So with that in mind, knowing that students are returning with the very uneven experiences of whether school was open or closed, and you've talked about some of the supports needed, what two or three things that you hope all districts really keep in mind and see as priorities as they try to create what the next normal is going to look like?
You've indicated that there's some more substantial funding, so some of these items that might not have been reached before could very well be something that could be started and become the new normal again, the way we're going to do things going forward, based on what we've learned.
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Robert McCann:
Well, the first thing we are encouraging is for everybody and that's students, parents, teachers, community members, everyone is to focus on what it's going to take to give these kids the best possibility for quote unquote 'normal' this year, and that means everybody that's eligible for getting vaccinated needs to get vaccinated. Everybody that's not getting vaccinated and is in a school building could put a mask on.
And everybody can be checking their politics at the door on those issues and focusing on that those are the things that ultimately are going to keep kids in classrooms. Meaning if they're not vaccinated or they're not eligible to be vaccinated yet but they're wearing a mask, if they are in close contact still with someone that tests positive, we wouldn't have to quarantine that student potentially.
So you know all of those things, all of those discussions are going right now focused on quote unquote 'a return to normalcy' and yet there's so much politics in the way of doing those simple things that it's just going to make that a challenge this year.
I preface my answer to that question with what it's going to take to give us the best chance for that return to normalcy, but beyond that you're right, that we are looking at the next two to three years with this pandemic funding, this stimulus funding as an opportunity to demonstrate what normal could look like if we were funding schools properly in the first place, so we are taking this additional funding and looking at what wraparound services that schools can be providing to cater to those unique needs of any individual student.
You know as well as anyone Suzanne, that Michigan has a thirty plus year old school funding formula that is a one size fits all approach to funding, that didn't really work thirty years ago and certainly doesn't work today. And yet we just try to continue to fit that square peg into a round hole and call it good enough.
So what we want to do is be looking at that federal funding and say what can we do to show what will work long term, that even though this is funding that really is only going to last two to three years, what programs can we put in place to show what could be? So again it's putting in those reading coaches; it's giving special education students that one-on-one time that they need to get caught back up, because we know for a fact that special education students in a remote learning process were even more impacted than any other student would have been in many cases. So it's about taking those services, getting reading coaches into younger kids' classrooms, getting tutors into school buildings, getting social workers into school buildings to help with those needs, it's providing all of those wraparound services to say that, this is the best chance we have to not only help these students that have been struggling over the last year and a half, and understandably so, but also creating what should be defined as our new normal, which is a better system than we used to have; a one that meets those unique needs of every student, instead of just saying all students are the same and here's a funding plan that fits that. If we can redefine what normal is here over the next couple of years and then advocate for the funding to meet that normal, then I think we'll have done the best job we can to give these students the best opportunities possible going forward.
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Suzanne Klein:
You've led nicely into the next question we wanted to pose, about the Michigan School Finance Research Collaborative (SFRC). It's something familiar to our listeners here in Michigan but may not be as well-known beyond our state. Hopefully folks have read and learned about it. When you think about that, and you just alluded to this a little bit in your last response, how might the pandemic have affected progress toward meeting the goals of this study and its recommendations or how might it have highlighted the impacts. where might the gaps remain? Are there other SFRC recommendations that might be achievable in the future? So talk with us a bit, step us into the future, as well as where we are currently with this whole SFRC frame for thinking.
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Robert McCann:
You know when the School Finance Research Collaborative released its groundbreaking report over three years ago now, it concluded that not only is Michigan not investing enough money into public education, but the money that it is investing they're doing the wrong way.
Like I said a minute ago it's treating every student as the same when we know that's not the case. And ultimately what that means is that we are under-funding every student and not doing even the most minimal effort to meet the unique needs that many students have; these are special education students, English language learners, people that need extra reading help.
We're not funding those programs correctly, so when schools implement those programs because they're necessary, that means we're ultimately pulling funding from every student. And that under serves the entire student population of Michigan. So now three years later, you know at the time they said the average student cost $9,590 per pupil, Michigan was well below that level even this year, with historic funding we bumped the level up to $8,700 per pupil.
That's still behind what the SFRC said three years ago. This year we updated the SFRC study to see where we were at now, and now the actual cost per pupil is over $10,300 per pupil and so you know, even though we're proud to get to $8,700 per pupil, we know that's still well behind where we need to be. More importantly, we know that the funding model that the state is still using, is that one size fits all formula.
So we have to convince policymakers in Lansing that while it's difficult to rewrite the bottle, it's necessary because that's ultimately what it's going to take. Even if we don't want to invest the amount of money we need, if we can at least invest the amount we are spending better, we are better meeting the needs of those students. So when I say that we're going to look at this federal stimulus money we have available to us and look at it as a model, I mean it very literally like that. We are going to show what some of these programs that could be invested in perpetually by the state, look like here over the next few years. We're going to say this is exactly what we could be doing if the state adopted an SFRC based formula. So it's really on us right now, to show exactly why we've been advocating for the SFRC so adamantly over the past three years, because we do have these additional resources available to us right now, thanks to the federal government. And we want to show what good that could do, not just for the next two to three years, but for the next 10 to 20 to 30 years, if the state were to make that same type of investment.
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Bob Maxfield:
Gratifying to hear you say Bob, that what we've learned during the pandemic and the infusion of federal money in some ways brings into sharper focus the recommendations of the school finance study and so I find that encouraging. As we go on before we run out of time here, excuse me if I was muted a moment ago, one of the challenges that we've been hearing a lot from, hearing about a lot from our school superintendents we're working with and from our principals in our graduate programs, is that the pandemic accelerated the rate of retirements. The number of students coming into education in the schools of education across the state is at an all-time low.
And this is a crisis, and it's a crisis unfolding this fall and will continue to unfold for a few more years. So what do you think can be done, what can be done to better recruit and prepare the next generation of teachers, and the next generation of principals and superintendents?
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Robert McCann:
State of Michigan has unfortunately made teaching an undesirable profession over the last thirty years, just due to chronic underfunding of schools which has led to lag in pay, to not enough teachers being in classrooms, we have overcrowded classrooms, to not funding the classrooms properly and you hear stories of teachers having to go out and buy their own equipment for students to even have, to adding on more and more responsibilities to educators that they didn't sign up for frankly. Like you can look at right now around the state we have the state health department punting health decisions for how students should even be brought back into classrooms down to schools who aren't public health experts. So it's just yet another thing being added on to the profession and added on to the frustrations that has made teaching unfortunately not something that our young college graduates are looking to get into at enough rate anyway.
So I think what we need to look holistically as a state, is what do we do to make teaching the profession it used to be; to make it a profession that young students want to get into once again? And that starts with investing in public education as a whole again.
And we've started that this year thanks to a lot of these federal investments that are getting made into public education in general and that's a good start. We see Detroit for the first time in, I don't know how many years, doesn't have any teacher openings right now. They've filled all of their classrooms with certified teachers for the first time in years, and that's a nice thing to see, but we still know that there are shortages in teachers across the board; we know there are shortages in support staff, coaches, things like that.
So the more we can be doing to say that Michigan is a state that is willing to invest in public education, that is willing to invest in the profession of educating students again, that's what's ultimately going to start this process of encouraging young students in high school and going into college to say that's the profession I want to get into again. So it's not going to happen overnight, but if we can keep this process going, I think that's ultimately what it's going to take to get those jobs back and not make the jobs available, make the talent available to fill the jobs we know are needed at this point.
You know, unfortunately, it took thirty years of disinvestment to get us to where we're at now, and it's going to take a few years of reinvestment to reverse that process. But I'm optimistic that we've at least started it this year, after so long and we'll see where it goes from here, but it's at least a start.
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Bob Maxfield:
One of the things we worry about is the more experienced end of the education spectrum, the superintendency. The superintendent pools have been smaller. Many people are making a jump to the superintendency from a principal position, and haven't had a lot of time to be seasoned. Any thoughts on that and any thoughts on how we can mitigate the extraordinary pressures on a superintendent, particular superintendents coming into it pretty inexperienced?
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Robert McCann:
Yeah you know it's...I think in talking to a lot of the superintendents, there hasn't been a more frustrating year and a half period that probably a superintendent ever had in generations in the state of Michigan; going from trying to figure out how to completely rethink how their districts work, overnight nearly you know last spring, as schools suddenly had to shut down, to now going into a year, where, yes, we have some additional support financially from the state and federal government but we have so many unanswered questions in terms of how school is going to work this year that they just can't answer at this point, and you add on top of that, I know I said this earlier but the level of politicalization we are putting on the start of school right now is putting superintendents in positions that they didn't sign up for quite frankly. They didn't sign up to have to get screamed at for hours at a school board meeting by people on either side of the issue of whether their child should be wearing masks or not. They didn't sign up for that level of frustration that they didn't have anything to do with. You know those are decisions that should be made elsewhere. Those are decisions that health experts should be taking on, not leaving for them to take on. So you know it's a frustrating period and to the superintendents that have decided it's enough and retired over the last year, it's hard to blame them and that's unfortunate.
So I think we need to be supporting our schools and understanding that look even if you disagree politically with any individual decision a superintendent is making right now, understand that they are making it in an effort to support their community, support their schools, and do everything they can to give their students as quote unquote "normal" a return to school as possible this year.
So if we can at least respect that that is everyone's goal right now, and leave some of the hostilities behind then, maybe we can give the superintendents that are out there doing everything they can right now, the support they need to be feeling, you know to feel like this job is respected again, and they are supported within their community.
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Bob Maxfield:
That's very wise advice. So, as we wrap this up besides what you've already said, is there anything else you wish you had said in this podcast that would be a value to school leaders moving forward?
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Robert McCann:
You know, again, I think the best thing we can be doing as a school community right now is highlighting the good work that we're doing. We know this is going to be a difficult year. We know that they're going to be challenges that pop up from the pandemic and health wise and hopefully it's, you know it's not as bad as what we're seeing in other states that have brought students back already.
But we know those challenges are becoming so let's take the opportunities to highlight the successes that we have this year. That, as we are giving students some of these new supports that are available: instituting new reading programs, tutoring programs, social programs to help students' emotional recovery, let's highlight those good news stories, let's highlight the success that some of these students are going to be having this year: recovering from the pandemic ,getting caught back up to grade level, getting reintegrated in with social programs and having school dances again and just even some of those most basic of things. Let's take the opportunity to highlight the good work happening in our schools this year, to remind people the integral role that schools ultimately play within their communities, because we need to be doing that, right now, we know that the business community wants students back in class, because that's what brings workers back to the workplace.
We know community's leaders respect the work that schools did to step up and lead the way over the last year, so let's be proud of those efforts, and let's take a minute to say we're doing good work and it's worth taking a closer look at.
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Bob Maxfield:
To which we say "Bravo!". Suzanne, what did we miss that you were hoping we would get to with Bob?
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Suzanne Klein:
Bob, you've covered a lot of ground. You've done a wonderful job at giving some of the history and background of how our state has functioned over the last 30 years or so, but you've also painted an optimistic view in terms of possibilities that are within our grasp to truly shape, over the next two to three years in terms of what might a school system do in response to the lessons learned from the pandemic, in response to having additional funding available that had not been previously available.
In organizations like The K-12 Alliance, the opportunity to share ideas, strategies, and find partners to talk with about those improvement efforts all bode well. Is there anything that if you had a magic wand, you would just do one more thing to add to that list, so the stars do align and three years from now we're having a different kind of conversation?
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Robert McCann:
Well, I think the most important thing, you know I'll give you a short answer; a short term answer and a longer term answer. The shorter term answer is we need to get the health experts of this state, making the decisions of what's safe for students right now. Those decisions can't be getting punted down to the school level because they're hard decisions to make. Superintendents are already dealing with enough right now; schools are already dealing with enough questions right now of ultimately what they need to be doing to have that quote unquote "normal" school year again.
So we need state and local health departments to be stepping up and making and giving very clear direction to schools of what they need to be doing inside the classrooms, inside the school buildings to keep kids safe. So in talking to superintendents I know that's on the top of their mind right now and that's critical in the short term to move this process forward. In the longer term, we need to have lawmakers start looking at how we can start fixing the funding formula again.
We're happy to have those new resources in place for the coming years, but Suzanne, you know as well as I do that if we don't have this opportunity to show what good that can do, and just go back to that old formula in a couple of years, that we're going to be further behind than we were when this pandemic started, and we are going to get rid of all of the good work that we've done over the next two years with those additional resources. So you know what we're going to be pushing for next year in the budget process is making some of those significant changes away from the one size fits all formula, to meeting that SFRC based unique formula that says we're going to target funding to the individual needs of any given school, and a given district and give them the resources that they need to cover those. And so that's got to be critical to our measures moving forward, or we're missing this opportunity that we have in front of us here.
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Bob Maxfield:
We're confident that you as Executive Director with the K-12 Alliance are uniquely positioned to make that happen, and I think your optimism about the reasons why it may happen is very much appreciated. So Bob, thank you very, very much for being part of this. We will put a link to the K-12 Alliance website on our website. We would encourage, I know you won't mind, if people contact you and say, hey what about this, what about that.
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Robert McCann:
Absolutely.
Website https://www.k12michigan.org
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Bob Maxfield:
And so thank you for that. So to our listeners, thank you very much for being part of this installment of Podcast for Leaderful Schools, as always, almost live from Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan.
And that is a wrap.