LANSING – All levels of education in Michigan will see increases for the coming school year under the budget signed Tuesday by Governor Rick Snyder.

And one more class of students will see the Michigan Educational Assessment Program test under provisions of the budget.

The budget (HB 5314 , PA 196) provides $50 per student additional for all school districts and up to $125 more per student for the lowest funded districts. Community colleges see a 3 percent increase and universities 6 percent.

Snyder acknowledged the distribution moved away from his preferred “2x” formula, where the lowest funded districts received twice the increase of the rest of the districts, but said the budget is an agreement and that change was part of the agreement.

The bill also includes full funding for early childhood programs. The increase, some of which is in contingency funds until districts show need, makes the state “no wait” for preschool programs, Snyder said.

Snyder, surrounded by some of the top robotics teams in the state, particularly praised the continued funding for the First Robotics program.

“It’s really a chance to engage our young people in science, technology, engineering and math,” he said. “I would go further and say business and teamwork.”

The teams participated in the bill signing ceremony by not only posing in the background as he signed the bill, but by delivering him the pens with which to sign the bill.

Overall, the budget includes $15.75 billion for education programs.

Opponents of the budget have slammed the budget for putting much of the increase for K-12 programs into the Michigan Public School Employees Retirement System. “That’s a liability of the school districts,” Snyder said, adding the state contribution allows districts to spend the money they get directly on other priorities.

The budget includes language requiring the Department of Education to return to using the MEAP instead of the Smarter Balanced Assessment Coalition test that it had planned for next year.

Snyder said the department was leading the effort to develop the test, but said the issue is also still under discussion.

“I think Common Core was a good idea, is a good idea,” he said. “The question is how that gets translated into a state assessment.”

Department officials initially said it would not be possible to have a new MEAP test ready for next school year, but Superintendent of Public Instruction Mike Flanagan has since said the department will follow the law and will have an assessment ready.

“Our primary goal is to have an assessment system next year that does not jeopardize the federal flexibility waiver our schools received,” MDE spokesperson Martin Ackley. “We have informed the Legislature that we are not able to generate an entire new MEAP assessment in less than a year without jeopardizing our federal waiver, so we will be seeing what can be done to make this work.”

Ackley said the department would be working with testing vendors to come up with a solution.

Snyder said the increase for universities was an effort toward his goal of reducing tuition increases. “Tuition is too high and we need to do something about that,” he said.

In addition to providing more funds for colleges and universities, Snyder said the state also needed to continue developing incentives for dual enrollment programs that would allow high school students to earn college credits for free.

He said the budget was a step toward his goal of restoring all of the funds cut from universities in his first budget. He could not commit to restoring the cuts in the 2015-16 budget.

Rep. Bill Rogers (R-Brighton), chair of the House Appropriations School Aid Subcommittee, was also able to retain $1.2 million he championed for a statewide contract for health and nutrition software.

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