State Rep. Jennifer Wortz (R-Quincy) voted on Wednesday for a K-12 education budget plan spearheaded by House Republicans that cuts wasteful red tape and includes historic amounts of per pupil funding. The legislative package removes expensive, for-profit grant programs and increases school funding to $12,000 per student. This amount would be the highest in the state’s history and surpasses the amounts in both the governor’s budget recommendations and House Democrats’ proposed budget.

“This budget plan ends the wasteful spending on dysfunctional systems that has defined our school aid budgets for years,” Wortz said. “By eliminating categorical grant funding and putting those resources directly into per pupil allowance, we are putting taxpayer dollars back in the hands of the schools that know the varying needs of their students the most.”

Wortz previously served as a member of the Quincy Community Schools Board of Education. She pointed to her time in that office as having given her insight into the frustrating ways that the government has conventionally spent school aid.

“The standard in Lansing for decades has been to pass budgets with huge portions coming with strings attached and wrapped in red tape,” Wortz said. “Our new budget plan takes the common-sense, but apparently radical, approach: simply allocate funding based on the number of students enrolled and let the schools decide how to spend it.

“Public schools now have the opportunity to do what they have been asking to do for years; they can now use funding to meet the needs of their community, whether that be providing meals, transportation, or mental health services. The outdated one-size-fits-all attitude towards education has failed. Our new approach empowers schools to capably utilize the functioning educational framework they have had all along. I have been a longtime advocate for funding students over broken systems, and I’m pleased to see us moving in that direction with this new budget plan.”