There’s one day during the fall school semester each school year when students are encouraged more than all other days to attend. They’re persuaded by pizza parties, pajama days, movie hours, and more. While the students refer to them as fun days, educators across the state refer to that one day as Count Day.
It’s a day when all public schools in Michigan count the number of students in their respective districts. The number of students in attendance translates directly to the amount of funding the schools receive, a metric mandated by the State School Aid Act.
“Count Day was a success (this fall),” Dr. Nikolai Vitti, Superintendent of Detroit Public Schools Community District, said of this year’s Oct. 4, 2023 day.
“The energy and excitement about Count Day continues …90% of our state funding comes from the count window.”
The window Vitti is talking about is the days following the official Count Day, where if a student is not in attendance on the Count Day itself, they can still be tallied if the student has an excused absence and attends within 30 calendar days following the count day. A student may still be counted if they have an unexcused absence and attend within ten school days following the count day.
“If students attend after the count window or enroll after the count window then we only receive 10 percent of about $9,600 to educate that same child for the rest of the year,” Vitti says.
Vitti says the school district he leads never turns away a child to enroll and attend one of their school after the count window but makes clear DPSCD is nonetheless educating the student for the remainder of the school year without being fully funded.
In this situation, the school district may be reimbursed the following year. However, there may not be money in the reserves for the present school year needed when said student is attending after the Count window has passed. Ultimately, that means some school districts like DPSCD are teaching more students with less allocated dollars.
However, Dr. Vitti sees some progress in attendance post-COVID era, which sent many students away from school buildings and instead to learning from home instruction.
“From a numbers point of view, we’re trending 200-300 students higher than we were last year. Although our enrollment took a hit from the pandemic, we’re starting to rebound from the 2021 fall count period.”
While the “Count Day” window has been the measuring stick for funding allocation, it can be seen as an outdated metric for determining dollars per pupil.
“I think there are different ways to determine enrollment which then drives revenue,” Dr. Vitti says. “It’s easy to talk about a window when you’re talking about cities in a district that don’t have the concentration of poverty and therefore the transiency rates that we see among our families.”
He’s talking about families across the city that can move multiple times during a school year to obtain secure housing, which can create a lot of movement from school to school.
“I do think there is a more modern way to do this where you can look at enrollment over time while also being sensitive of transiency rates that our families experience.”
Amid efforts to get students inside the classroom to be counted as it relates to funding resources, it’s a two-pronged effort for many school districts across the state and the country battling chronic absenteeism.
“It’s undeniable that there has been a negative lingering impact from the pandemic on attendance. DPSCD has always struggled with the higher rate of chronicle absenteeism which means more than 18 days of schools and that goes back to concentrated poverty.”
Detroit had 78 percent chronic absenteeism in 2021; in 2022, that number dropped to 68 percent.
So, what more can be done to empower students to get inside the classroom on a consistent basis? The state level, following the latest budget passage, attempts to ensure more educational investment is challenged by school districts.
Overall, the per pupil foundational allowance has increased from $8,700 in fiscal year 2022 to $9,150 in 2023 and to $9,608 in 2024.
“Big increases, still not sufficient,” says Dr. Michael F. Rice, Superintendent State Board of Education. “We know different children have different needs, different needs have different costs, and we should be funding the needs of children in this state, not simply the number of children.”
Section 31A funding is financial resources for economically disadvantaged children, funding that has increased 86 percent in two fiscal years. Marking a pot of $512 million in 2022 to $952 million in 2024.
“We know that children growing up poor have greater needs on average than children who are growing up with a lot of exposure,” Dr. Rice says. “These have been the best two budgets back-to-back since Prop A in 1994 to change our funding system. We still have a long way to go before we’re adequately and equitably funding all of our children in the state. We remain billions of dollars underfunded in public education in the state.”
As school districts like Detroit wrestle with improving attendance numbers, the state is making efforts to invest in these chronic challenges with additional financial support.
Additional education funding is supporting children with disabilities and students learning the English language.
About Post Author
