By Shelby Stewart-Soldan
ssoldan@mihomepaper.com
Brandon Twp. — During the regular Monday night meeting, the Brandon Board of Education unanimously passed a resolution calling for full, permanent funding of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act and to forward the adopted resolution to the K-12 Alliance of Michigan and to federal and state legislators representing the geographical area of the Brandon School District.
“For everybody’s awareness, the K-12 Alliance of Michigan is a domestic, nonprofit organization, formerly named the Tri-County Alliance for Public Education,” said Board Member Jody Hall, who brought the resolution to the board. “This is an association that is a professional alliance among the public education superintendents of Michigan to promote public education in Michigan through a variety of means.”
The resolution calls for full funding of IDEA, which was originally passed and signed into law in 1975. It was originally named the Education for All Handicapped Children Act, and the name was changed in 1990, she said.
“IDEA has four purposes, generally,” she said. “It’s changed overtime. But one, most importantly, is to ensure all children with disabilities have an available, free and appropriate education. That the rights of disabled children and their parents are protected. To assist states and localities to provide such education, which is what this legislation is focusing on, and to assess and ensure effectiveness of efforts to educate disabled children.”
On Jan. 31, 2025, US Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-Md) and Congresswoman Susie Lee (D-Nev) reintroduced the Keep Our Promises to America’s Children and Teachers act (Keep Our PACT) through HR 869, which calls to fully fund Title One and the IDEA on a mandatory basis.
“When the IDEA was passed, the federal government was supposed to fund 40% of the additional cost incurred that school districts would face with the passage of the legislation,” said Hall. “And that 40%, since 1975, it has never been funded at the 40% rate. It’s pretty much ranging from 18% down to currently about 10.3%. Tonight we’re just asking for the board to pass this resolution to encourage our federal legislatures to pass a bipartisan bill to fully fund the act. And when I was reviewing the bill, it was stated that it would start small percentages and become fully funded at the 40% in about ten years.”
The bill was referred to the committee on Education and Workforce, as well as the Committee on the Budget for consideration.