In October 2025, when the current state budget was signed into law, nonpublic schools received $21 million for improved building security, school resource officers, and mental health services, as well as millions more to provide nonpublic students access to healthy meals and other critical support services.
Unfortunately, the fiscal year 2027 state budget proposed by Governor Whitmer on February 11 included zero dollars for nonpublic school safety or healthy meals, as it did at the outset of the current year budget process.
It is worth taking a step back to evaluate advocacy efforts that can determine a final state budget, and how MCC supports Catholic schools across the state. Public policy advocacy through engagement with lawmakers, as well as grassroots citizens who contact their elected officials, remains crucial for informing policymaker decisions. As the public policy voice for the Church in this state, MCC’s advocacy efforts played a critical role in securing the support Catholic and nonpublic schools received in the final version of the current year budget.
To begin, MCC remains in contact with key lawmakers on both sides of the aisle throughout the budget cycle to advocate for securing equitable access to state services for Catholic and nonpublic school students.
MCC’s long history of working in a nonpartisan way includes arranging for nonpublic school leaders to visit with their respective elected officials at the state Capitol. The visits are coordinated by MCC and the Michigan Association of Nonpublic Schools (MANS) and allow principals and administrators to advocate directly on behalf of their schools.
To assist nonpublic school leaders with their advocacy efforts, MCC will, for example, produce and distribute video testimonials from principals and administrators who share first-hand accounts of how state funding helped protect their students. The video interviews are then paired with footage directly from the school where a new locking system or bulletproof glass, for example, has been installed.
Once the videos are completed, they are paired with an MCC Action Alert online to invite grassroots citizens to urge their lawmakers to support nonpublic school funding in the budget. Last year, as a result, nearly 3,000 messages reached the email inboxes of almost every sitting state legislator in Lansing.
Ultimately, such efforts bore fruit. Funding for school safety grants in the final budget increased to $14 million, up from the previous year’s amount of $1.5 million. A separate $3.5 million was made available for hiring school resource officers. Another $3.5 million was allocated for mental health services in nonpublic schools, such as the hiring of counselors.
Nonpublic schools also benefited from additional budget support, such as $1.6 million to include eligible schools in the state’s expanded school meal program. The program began a few years ago with the goal of providing all students access to healthy meals regardless of their family’s income. Eligible nonpublic schools had been excluded from this expansion up until the current budget.
Despite the success of last year’s communications, grassroot advocacy, and in-person lobbying efforts, continued state funding for Michigan’s nonpublic students is not set in stone. As with many parts of the budget, these items are reconsidered during each year’s budget process, which begins with the Governor’s recommendation. Just as she did the previous year, the Governor last month presented a budget with no safety funding for nonpublic schools, and no funding for nonpublic schools across several areas that are currently funded in the state budget.
MCC is prepared and ready to work with lawmakers – Democrats and Republicans - to advocate for continued state support of building security, mental health care, access to healthy meals, and other services that benefit all children, regardless of the schools they attend.
The Word from Lansing is a regular column for Catholic news outlets provided by Michigan Catholic Conference, the official public policy voice of the Catholic Church in this state.
