## Facts

- Michigan enacted 1993 P.A. 362, amending the School Code to create “public school academies” (charter schools).
- Public school academies were organized as Michigan nonprofit corporations with bylaws and boards of directors.
- Authorizing bodies (including local and intermediate school boards, community colleges, and public universities) could issue charters, set board-selection methods, and revoke charters.
- Academies could not charge tuition and could not be religious or sectarian.
- Academies were funded through state school-aid payments under statutory formulas similar to other public schools.
- A nonprofit organization and individual taxpayers challenged the statute, arguing the academies were not “public schools” under the Michigan Constitution because they lacked governance by elected school boards and adequate public control.
- Plaintiffs also argued that funding academies violated Michigan constitutional limits on public funding of nonpublic schools (commonly associated with “Parochiaid”/Proposal C), asserting the corporate form and appointed boards made academies effectively nonpublic.

## Issues

1. Whether public school academies established under P.A. 362 qualify as “public schools” under Mich. Const. 1963, art. 8, § 2.
2. Whether state school-aid funding of public school academies violates Michigan constitutional prohibitions on appropriating public funds to aid or maintain nonpublic schools (including Proposal C-related restrictions).

## Decision

- The Michigan Supreme Court upheld P.A. 362 as constitutional.
- The Court held that public school academies are “public schools” within the meaning of art. 8, § 2.
- The Court held that state school-aid funding to academies does not violate constitutional prohibitions on funding nonpublic schools because the academies are public, not nonpublic.
- The Court rejected the argument that public-school status requires governance by locally elected boards.
- The Court recognized dissenting views that the statute weakened public control and accountability, but the majority treated those concerns as primarily legislative policy questions.

## Legal Principles

- Article 8, § 2 grants the Legislature broad authority to define, by law, the state’s “system of free public elementary and secondary schools,” subject to constitutional constraints.
- Public-school status does not hinge on a single governance model (such as locally elected school boards) if the statutory framework provides sufficient public oversight and accountability.
- An entity’s nonprofit corporate form does not, by itself, determine whether it is public or nonpublic; courts look to statutory creation, function, legal constraints, and public supervision.
- Constitutional prohibitions on public aid to nonpublic schools apply only if the recipient institution is nonpublic; once a school is classified as public within the constitutionally permissible statutory scheme, those anti-aid provisions are not triggered.
- Courts will not invalidate education policy choices solely because they are contested; the judicial role is to assess specific constitutional violations, not to decide whether the policy is advisable.

## Conclusion

The court sustained Michigan’s charter-school statute, ruling that legislatively created public school academies—though organized as nonprofit corporations with appointed boards—are constitutionally “public schools” subject to public oversight and therefore may receive state school-aid funds without violating Michigan’s limits on funding nonpublic schools.


Council of Orgs. & Others for Educ. About Parochiaid, Inc. v. Engler, 455 Mich. 557, 566 N.W.2d 208 (1997)