Our students walk on dirt strewn floors, use cheap tissues that rub their noses raw and place their belongings in lockers that open without entering a combination. Students are forced to go without receiving basic necessities from the school, leaving the responsibility of providing supplies to fall on teachers and donations.

Why? Because our district is losing money; the families that left our shrinking mitten state are partially to blame.

Birthing rates in Michigan are on a decline, resulting in fewer students being enrolled into public schools. For the 2013 year, Michigan saw 113,732 live births, and in 2000, there were 136,048 live births, according to the Michigan Department of Health and Human services.

Because of this, Stockbridge High school’s enrollment has gone down over the last several years.

For the 2013 school year, the student count for Stockbridge High School was a total of 465, and in 2014 the enrollment was 461, according to Principal Richard Cook.  That is a 86 percent decrease of students.

“I would always like to see our enrollment increase or stay steady,” Cook said. “Our primary funding comes from our per-pupil foundation, so for every student we receive a certain amount of money per student. Fewer students equals less money evenly. If you get fewer students you end up with fewer teachers.”

Cook says it is important to look at the kindergarten and senior class to see how the district will be affected.

“The senior class has a hundred kids, but the incoming kindergarten class is 70. The district will lose 30 students as a whole,” Cook said. “We roughly get $7,000 per kid. If you take out 30 kids, at $7,000, you lose $210,000.”

This small amount of money given by the state is not enough to maintain a quality high school.

“If you think about how many students actually go to our school and how much schools need for budgeting, I don’t find it is a very high amount,” Junior Larry Cornish said. “Look around in our school, teachers can barely afford to buy kids pencils.”