AIM for 21st Century Small Schools Initiative

Posted: Friday, 30 May 2008 11:11AM

Gov Asks For Small High Schools, Renewable Power Standard

Gov. Jennifer Granholm offered business a share of the savings in a plan to reduce the number of state prison inmates in her speech Friday at the Detroit Regional Chamber's Mackinac Policy Conference.

And she proposed a "21st Century School Fund" to create 100 small, academically challenging high schools across the state.

Granholm began by reviewing Michigan's economic challenge -- the loss of 330,000 manufacturing jobs since 2000 as part of a national flight of manufacturing jobs overseas, and Big Three market share falling from 70 percent in 1990 to 45 percent today.

But she also pointed to dozens of big investments in the state in recent years by companies in her targeted areas of alternative energy, the life sciences, advanced manufacturing and homeland security. And she touted her continuing overseas investment missions, especially alternative energy efforts in Sweden.

Granholm said she was asking the Legislature and the crowd at Mackinac to back three initiatives -- the 21sts Century School Fund, a mandate that 10 percent of the state's power must come from renewable sources by 2015, and the prison reform plan.

Granholm said the small high school plan is part of an overall effort to "attack, declare war, on the dropout problem." She said Michigan "must replace those large, impersonal high schools that fail with small, challenging high schools that work." She also backed more "middle colleges," five-year high schools that graduate their students with an associate's degree or other usable career credential. She said the 21st Century Schools Fund would require no new taxes, only a redirection of existing revenue.

More broadly, Granholm said of education, the state needs to flip education on its head to meet the needs of employers. "We don't want people to get degrees in French or political science," she said. "Those are my degrees, so I can say that. We want people to get degrees in areas we need," such as health care.

Granholm also asked -- as she did last year -- for the renewable energy standard, which has been tied up in the Legislature over complaints that it remonopolizes the state's electric market, and doesn't go far enough to mandate renewable energy.

However, Granholm said the lack of the standard means Michigan is losing out on massive investments that are occurring elsewhere in renewable energy.

Granholm also touted her record as a cost-cutter, pointing out that she's cut more out of state budgets than any Michigan governor in history, that Michigan is now 46th in state employees per capita, and that the state is leading the nation in putting state business online.

But she said one area of state government is skyrocketing in staff and costs: corrections. She said Michigan's corrections staff has grown from 5 percent of state employment to more than 20 percent, and that Michigan incarcerates its citizens at a rate far higher than its neighbors -- with no appreciable effect on crime rates.

Granholm, a former prosecutor, said that "I will not allow violent criminals to be released into society, period." But she said there are ways to trim the prison population by selectively releasing low-risk inmates. And she proposed sharing any savings on a one-third basis between law enforcement, higher education and a reduction in the Michigan Business Tax surcharge.

In opening her speech, Granholm joked about her recent surgery for bowel obstruction, saying she pleaded with the doctor not to use the word "bowel" in public comments, and that state Republicans were in no way responsible for the "obstruction." And, she said, the last thing she remembered before the anesthesia took her under was her surgeon saying, "You know, I'm a Republican..."

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