Nearly 70 percent of Michigan residents who participated in a June poll support a plan that would boost school funding, giving backers of that plan some strong ammunition as they look to influence the November elections.

“We need to make school funding an unavoidable issue in the current election cycle and beyond,” said Wanda Cook-Robinson, superintendent of Oakland Schools, the intermediate school district for Oakland County.

Cook-Robinson is a member of the School Finance Research Collaborative, a bipartisan group of business and education experts aiming to ensure fair and equitable funding for schools across the state.

The group, formed in 2017, commissioned a first-of-its-kind study about school funding in Michigan that — when released earlier this year — called for the state to increase the base amount it spends per pupil to $9,950, an increase of $1,500.

Source: Michigan schools: Poll shows strong support for more funding