Special education funding reform and the MI Blueprint
School funding sounds like someone else’s fight once your child ages out. It isn’t. Every dollar Michigan fails to invest in special education early becomes a bigger crisis in the adult service system later, and caregivers who’ve already lived that crisis have standing to say so.
You don’t need a currently enrolled student to have standing on this issue. Written testimony connecting your family’s adult-service crisis back to inadequate special education funding is exactly the kind of evidence legislators rarely hear and specifically need.
A four-decade-old formula
Michigan’s special education funding structure has not been substantially rewritten in roughly forty years, despite dramatically changed needs.
What the MI Blueprint proposes
A comprehensive reform package addressing funding adequacy, staffing shortages, and support structures across the state’s special education system.
Underfunding compounds downstream
Inadequate school-based investment produces students who reach adulthood with fewer skills and weaker service connections, feeding directly into the adult crisis.
Your family still has standing
Aged-out families understand the downstream cost of underfunded special education better than almost anyone testifying in Lansing.
Committee testimony windows are narrow
Budget subcommittee hearings happen on a legislative calendar. Watch for public comment windows and submit before they close.
Written testimony counts
You don’t have to travel to Lansing. Written testimony submitted to the School Aid subcommittee carries real weight in the record.
How to engage with MI Blueprint advocacy
Review what the MI Blueprint for Student Success actually recommends
Draft your family’s story linking school underfunding to adult-service gaps
Track School Aid budget subcommittee hearing and comment windows
Written or in-person testimony to the relevant legislative subcommittee
Michigan Alliance for Families and MI DD Council both track this issue
Renee’s son aged out of special education eight years before she ever testified in Lansing, and she almost didn’t submit anything, assuming her family’s story was too far removed to matter anymore. She wrote three paragraphs connecting his underfunded school years directly to the adult service gaps he still lives with today. A legislative aide told her afterward it was the only testimony in that hearing that traced the line all the way from kindergarten funding to a 30-year-old man’s current waiver waitlist.
When you want to engage with special education funding advocacy, here is how
Escalation ladder
- 1Review what the MI Blueprint for Student Success actually proposes.
- 2Draft your family’s story connecting school funding to adult outcomes.
- 3Track School Aid budget subcommittee hearing dates.
- 4Submit written testimony before the comment window closes.
- 5Coordinate with Michigan Alliance for Families or the MI DD Council.
- 6Share your testimony publicly to amplify the record.
Have ready
- A summary of the MI Blueprint’s key recommendations
- A drafted version of your family’s school-to-adulthood story
- The current School Aid budget subcommittee hearing schedule
- Contact information for Michigan Alliance for Families
- Contact information for the Michigan Developmental Disabilities Council
An aged-out family isn’t a bystander in this fight. You’re the evidence of what happens when the funding formula stays broken.
Renee almost didn’t submit testimony to the School Aid budget subcommittee, certain that her son’s story belonged to a chapter of Michigan’s education system that had already closed. He’d aged out eight years earlier. She wrote three paragraphs anyway, connecting his underfunded school years directly to the adult service waitlist he was still stuck on at 30. A legislative aide told her afterward that hers was the only testimony in the entire hearing that traced the line from a funding formula written decades ago all the way to a specific adult still living its consequences.
Michigan’s special education funding crisis, briefly
Michigan’s special education funding structure has remained substantially unchanged for roughly four decades, even as the complexity and cost of serving students with disabilities has grown considerably. Districts across the state report that federal and state funding covers only a fraction of actual special education costs, forcing local general funds to absorb the difference, which strains every other part of a district’s budget in the process.
What the MI Blueprint proposes
The Michigan Special Education Blueprint for Student Success is the most comprehensive reform proposal to address this in the current era, recommending changes to funding adequacy, staffing ratios, and support infrastructure across the state’s special education system. It represents years of stakeholder input aimed at rebuilding a funding structure that predates most of the students it currently serves.
Why adult-service families should care about school funding
The connection between school funding and the adult service crisis isn’t abstract. Underfunded special education produces students who reach adulthood with fewer skills built, weaker transition planning, and thinner connections to adult service systems already stretched past capacity. Every dollar not invested early becomes a larger, more expensive gap someone has to close later, usually a family, usually alone.
How to actually engage, even years after aging out
Written testimony to the School Aid budget subcommittee doesn’t require a currently enrolled student. It requires a story connecting cause to effect, delivered by someone who has genuinely lived both halves of it. Michigan Alliance for Families and the Michigan Developmental Disabilities Council both track MI Blueprint advocacy and hearing schedules, and can help families find the right moment to submit testimony that actually lands.
Renee’s son’s story didn’t stop mattering the day he aged out. It became the evidence nobody else in that hearing room could offer. Yours can be too.
Jim Palasty is the founder of OASIS for Autism and a single father of an adult autistic daughter in Michigan.