To provide a “template” or “place holder” for a Fiscal Year 2014-2015 K-12 School Aid budget. This bill contains no appropriations, but may be amended at a later date to include them.   Official Text and Analysis.

With the recommendation that the substitute (S-1) be adopted and that the bill then pass.

To increase spending to schools with a high proportion of lower income students, and give school districts more money to cover their portion of annual pension fund contributions.

To give extra money to school districts with declining enrollment.

To cut the amount allocated to online "cyberschools".

To mandate that a charter school management company contracted to manage the schools in a fiscally failed school district (Muskegon Heights) and was unable to fully execute the terms of the contract to repay the management fees it collected.

To require school districts to include in reports they must file information about all individual credit cards the district uses, and the costs of reimbursed out-of-state travel by administrators.

To revise many of the provisions of the school budget in ways that would in general replace the spending and policy preferences of the Republican majority with those of the Democratic minority.

The Senate version of the K-12 school aid budget for the fiscal year that begins Oct 1, 2014. It would appropriate $13.73 billion for K-12 public schools, compared to $13.36 billion originally appropriated for the prior year.

To adopt a version of the budget that contains no appropriations, but is instead intended to launch negotiations to work out the differences between the House and Senate budgets.

To send the bill back to the Senate "stripped" of all actual appropriations. This vote is basically a procedural method of launching negotiations to work out the differences between the House and Senate budgets.