Michigan may have to cough up millions of dollars in additional funding to local school districts because of a state Court of Appeals ruling that says they should have been reimbursed for the cost of keeping and reporting more data required under education reforms enacted in the last decade.

In an opinion released Monday, a unanimous three-judge panel in Lansing said state officials — essentially the Legislature and governor — violated the 1978 Headlee Amendment by ordering schools to turn over data about students and student performance without providing additional resources. The judges said that the state Supreme Court previously ruled that if the state mandates any new activities by school districts, Headlee requires the state to provide funding for it.

Dennis Pollard, a lawyer representing taxpayers from 460 school districts that initiated the suit in 2000, said the reporting requirements add between $50 million and $100 million to districts' spending each year.  It's the latest round in a more than 25-year battle between the state and school district officials who want the state to pay for programs. The state argued that the law prompting the lawsuit created only an agency to collect student data.

But the court found that the state still needed to reimburse the schools. The state enforces a federal mandate — the No Child Left Behind Act — to report the data, the court said, and other state laws outside of the lawsuit also mandate the data reporting. 

"We have districts that are very close to being broke, and they've had to take money out of the classroom to pay for all the mandates," said William Mayes, executive director of the Michigan Association of School Administrators. "This case acknowledges there are very real costs that go along with government mandates."

"Does that mean that money given to us previously for general purposes will now be earmarked to pay for this?" said Tom White, executive director of the state Association of School Business Officials. "That's the big question: Will we just get it packaged in a different fashion?" 

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