News Photo by Julie Goldberg Ella White Elementary School students complete assignments in teacher Jenny McInerney’s classroom on Tuesday.

ALPENA — Though Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed the 2019-20 state budget on Monday night, school districts are still waiting to see what the final numbers will look like and how that will affect their own budgets.

Alpena Public Schools Superintendent John VanWagoner said Tuesday that Whitmer vetoed $128 million from the state’s School Aid Fund — from which school districts are paid based on enrollment — but districts hadn’t heard Tuesday afternoon specifically what was vetoed.

Lawmakers earlier this month sent Whitmer a school budget that included an increase of $240 per-student, or 3%, for most districts. That would mean an increase to $8,111 per student for all Northeast Michigan school districts, according to the Michigan House Fiscal Agency.

Schools’ budgets took effect July 1, and school boards across the state have passed conservative budgets while they waited to find out what the the state would give them. Most school revenues will be based on the number of kids counted during the official fall student count day today.

VanWagoner said the 3% increase would help, but his district also depends on a lot of categoricals that could affect the overall total.

“Until we can see the entire picture of what she’s vetoed, we really don’t know,” he said Tuesday. “It could actually be a negative budget for us, still. We just don’t know until we’re able to see what all those cuts were in the categoricals that she made, and that has not been announced, yet.”

Dan O’Connor, superintendent of Alcona Community Schools, said he and his school board can’t adjust any of the district’s programs, yet.

“We’re not anticipating adding any teachers or programming, at this point,” O’Connor said.

Rogers City Area Schools Superintendent Nick Hein said Tuesday there wasn’t enough information out to see how the state would come through in real money.

O’Connor said the 3% increase is slightly higher than what Alcona budgeted for in the summer, so, if that came to pass, it should have a positive impact on the district.

“We estimate maybe between $30,000 and $40,000 that will be to the positive from what we budgeted,” he said. “It’s kind of unknown until we navigate through our student count and to see what else comes out of Lansing in terms of some of the adjustments that the governor is attempting to make.”

Alcona adopted a budget in the summer that projected a deficit. The hope, O’Connor said, is to decrease the budget deficit as the district works through the year and as state funding becomes clearer.

Even as the budget picture remained muddy, several educators raised concerns about cuts to various programs.

Paula Herbert, president of the Michigan Education Association, said in a statement meaningful education programs and initiatives were cut in the budget Whitmer signed into law.

“Those are tough choices to make, but it is important to remember that many of those initiatives were fully funded in the transformational education budget the governor proposed back in March,” Herbert said. “No individual education expenditure is more important than ensuring our schools have the basic resources they need to help every student succeed.”

Scott Reynolds, superintendent of the Alpena-Montmorency-Alcona Educational Service District, said in an email to The News that he would like to see the per-pupil payments from the state and special education reimbursement increased.

“I also remain concerned with the absence of adequate funding for universal preschool,” Reynolds said. “Particularly, in northeast Michigan, our families don’t all have equitable options. In the era of the Third Grade Reading Law and higher expectations for all students, it seems to me that an investment in our early childhood programming would be a greater consideration.”

A law took effect this school year requiring students to be held back in most cases if they aren’t reading at grade level by the end of third grade.

Though he’s pleased to see funding to support education, the state remains far from the target needed to adequately support learners, Reynolds said.

“This problem isn’t going away and has implications for our entire state,” he said.

Julie Goldberg can be reached at 989-358-5688 or jgoldberg@thealpenanews.com. Follow her on Twitter @jkgoldberg12.