Larger class sizes, split-grade classrooms, fewer instructional aides, a loss of free breakfast and lunch for economically disadvantaged students, and less district support for extracurricular activities: These are a few of the impacts Traverse City Area Public Schools (TCAPS) is weathering as the district starts a new school year without a finalized state budget in place. And with Michigan veering ever closer to a full-on government shutdown, TCAPS Superintendent John VanWagoner warns that a corresponding shutdown of local schools is very much a possibility.

Historically, Michigan legislators have finalized the budget for the next fiscal year in late June or early July. State law even requires the two chambers of the legislature to “pass and present general appropriation bills for the upcoming fiscal year to the governor on or before July 1.” The goal, always, is to make sure a budget is ready to go into effect on October 1, the first day of the state’s new fiscal year.

This year, partisan disagreements between the two chambers – Michigan’s House of Representatives is controlled by Republicans, while the Senate has a Democratic majority – have led to an errant budgeting process. Speaking to The Ticker in July, after legislators blew by the July 1 deadline, VanWagoner mused about the possibility of starting the school year “without knowing how much money we’re going to have from the state for the year.”

Two months later, a budget has yet to make its way to the governor’s desk. This past week, the Michigan House finally passed its version of the spending plan; the Senate delivered its draft in May. Now, the two chambers have just over three weeks to negotiate a consensus plan before the current fiscal year ends. If a budget deal isn’t reached by the end of this month, then the state government will shut down at the end of the day on Tuesday, September 30.

Based on recent history, government shutdowns in Michigan don’t last long. The most recent shutdown occurred in 2009, and it spurred a swift compromise, ending just two hours after it started. The shutdown before that, in 2007, only stretched on for four hours. To that point, when asked what a shutdown would mean for TCAPS, VanWagoner says “it just depends on how long it goes.”

“If it goes to the point where state workers are not working, then there's nobody to hit the button to send us our monthly payment,” VanWagoner says. “My hope, obviously, is that our legislators are going to work to get a deal in place so we don’t get there. But if this thing were to go on, then yes, it could get to the point where we have to shut schools down.”

While there’s still time to avert that outcome, VanWagoner says the budget impasse has already done some damage that will be hard to rectify during the current school year. Per the superintendent, the TCAPS fiscal year runs from July 1 to June 30, which means the district’s budget process always includes some conservative guesswork about what the state spending plan might look like. In years where the budget comes through “right around that July 1 mark,” TCAPS tries to make on-the-fly changes to its own budget to reflect how much money is coming from the state.

“Our board has been very steadfast in saying, ‘What can we do to eliminate splits and reduce class sizes by adding teachers?’” VanWagoner tells The Ticker. “This year, we didn’t have that luxury. It was extremely challenging and frustrating, not knowing if there were resources to do more for our kids.”

One result, VanWagoner says, is a large number of “splits,” or multi-grade classrooms, throughout TCAPS this year.

“We always have a few splits,” VanWagoner says. “Sometimes, our numbers are just awkward. We might get 35 fourth-graders and 40 fifth-graders, and that doesn’t evenly give you two classes of 23-25 students, which is usually what we’re shooting for, in terms of class size. But it also doesn't give you enough students to justify another section for each grade. So, that’s how we sometimes end up with a split class, where it’s half fourth-graders and half fifth-graders, and that allows us to hit that 23-25 number.”

While it’s possible the new state budget will give TCAPS more money than anticipated, VanWagoner says the die has already been cast on this school year. With school underway as of last Tuesday, students have been placed in their classrooms, teachers with split classes have modified curriculum plans to teach multiple grades, and the hiring window for new teachers has effectively closed.

“Knowing [the budget] July 1, you still have teachers that are looking for jobs or moving to new places,” VanWagoner says of the hiring challenge. “Once you get into August, and especially into September, it gets really, really hard to find quality people. And that’s not just teachers; that’s aides, that’s principals; it’s all across the board.”

While staffing is where TCAPS took the biggest hits due to budget uncertainty – “85 percent of our spending is salaries and benefits,” VanWagoner notes – there are a few other areas where families might notice differences this year.

“We have no idea what’s going to happen with universal free breakfast and lunch,” VanWagoner notes as an example. “The funding is there until September 30, so we’ve got kids right now that are starting school who we’re providing breakfast and lunch to, but we may not be able to do that come October 1. We also have staff that we hired to be able to feed that many kids and cook that much food. What does it look like if all of that goes away?”

Elsewhere, VanWagoner says things like field trips and extracurricular activities will likely get less district support than in previous years.

“Our parents and booster clubs are going to have to do a lot of additional support in those areas, and we are especially relying on them for transportation,” VanWagoner says. “We try to do what we can, but when you’re in a district our size, transportation is a large cost, and when you’re driving to Alpena, or Saginaw, or Grand Rapids on a Tuesday night for a basketball game, it just gets really tough to cover all those costs.”