In an op-ed in Sunday’s Detroit Free Press, campaign finance and school privatization expert Maurice Cunningham laid out where the money is coming from for a new voucher scheme that is being circulated as a ballot measure.

“Campaign finance records show that Let MI Kids Learn has raised over $1.7 million,” Cunningham wrote. “Michiganders who have followed the DeVos family’s decades of effort to privatize public education will not be surprised to learn that the family has given $400,000. The DeVos connected Great Lakes Education Project Education Fund chipped in $25,000. The two top donors are from Washington, DC: the State Government Leadership Foundation gave $475,000 and Get Families Back to Work, which apparently shares office space with the Republican Governor’s Association, donated $875,000.”

The last two are so-called “dark money” donors who don’t have to disclose where their funding actually comes from.

Read more about this latest DeVos ballot scheme and the effort to get the “scholarship” program (which will cost public schools $500 million or more in tax revenue per year) adopted without a vote of the public. 

If you encounter petition circulators for these measures, please email MEA’s Amanda West at awest@mea.org. Please include information on the location (address or cross-streets), which petitions they are circulating, and how they are talking about them to potential signers.