More than 70 percent of students in the Detroit Public Schools Community District were chronically absent in the 2017-18 school year, according to a recently updated state database.

The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services does not know how many households have been removed from state welfare and assistance programs because their children were missing an extensive amount of school. But Michigan law requires the department to have a policy that cuts off households in the state’s Family Independence Program if a child is not meeting school attendance requirements.

The law authorizing sanctions for households whose children do not attend school full-time was enacted in 2015. At the time, the department reported that it had already implemented such a policy. A Senate Fiscal Agency bill summary said that 189 household groups had been sanctioned under the policy in the 2013-14 fiscal year. It also mentioned that 68 households had been penalized during the first three months of the following fiscal year.

When contacted by Michigan Capitol Confidential this month, the department said it did not have current figures on how many households had been sanctioned for truancy, and it would take a couple of weeks to get them. A spokesperson did, however, describe the procedures the department uses in truancy cases.

“Disqualification from the Family Independence Program only occurs after MDHHS exhausts opportunities to work with the family to address school attendance issues,” Bob Wheaton, a spokesperson for the department, said in an email.

According to Wheaton, the department takes several steps:

• Contacting the family about the truancy issue and initiating an attendance compliance test.

• Contacting the school/truancy officer.

• Assessing the needs of the family and any barriers to school attendance.

• Working with the family to develop an attendance plan.

• Providing services or referrals to services that could help remove barriers to attendance.

• Reviewing the progress of the plan as well as results of the attendance compliance test.

Wheaton said the number of households that had benefits suspended due to truancy was not readily available.

Republican State Board of Education member Tom McMillin does not agree with the 2015 bill that put the sanctions into state statute. McMillin said in an email that he is disturbed that the government is unaware of the number of families who have been denied assistance because of the law.

Regarding the effectiveness of such legislation, McMillin said there are too many variables that could lead to a child missing school.

“I just think there are many reasons why a child may not be attending the school,” he said. “And there may be times when they are truant and the family isn’t aware of it. I also am not so sure that compulsory attendance at government schools is a very good idea.”

According to the state of Michigan’s Center for Educational Performance and Information, more than 70 percent of students in the Detroit Public Schools Community District were chronically absent. This means they missed at least 10 percent of the school days, or at least 18 days, based on a typical 180-day school calendar.

Michigan’s new Democratic governor is trying to reverse course on steps taken by her Republican predecessor to require childless, able-bodied beneficiaries of the Obamacare Medicaid expansion to meet work, training or community service requirements. In a February letter to the federal administrator of the program, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer called the work requirements “onerous.”

In the letter, Whitmer cited an analysis by the Manatt law firm, which predicted that Michigan’s new Medicaid work requirements would cause 61,000 to 183,000 people to lose their health coverage over the course of a year. That’s a much larger estimate than was reached by the state’s House Fiscal Agency, which predicted that between 27,000 and 54,000 would be disenrolled. The requirements, which go into effect Jan. 1, 2020, apply to childless adults and some parents of children over the age of 6.

Robert Gordon, Whitmer’s choice to head the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, alluded to the Manatt analysis in his confirmation hearings before the state Senate. The new work requirements, he said, may be overbearing. He also said that Whitmer wants to do away with monthly reporting requirements and lower the age at which people are exempted from the requirements from 62 to 50.

The Manatt analysis draws on the experience of Arkansas, and according to national experts on Medicaid and health care policy, many reasons may explain why people left Medicaid after that state implemented its work requirements.

Naomi Lopez-Bauman is the director of health care policy at the Goldwater Institute. She said in an interview that Medicaid and any work requirements connected to it can vary from state to state.

“In Arkansas, 18,000 individuals were disenrolled from Medicaid between August and December 2018,” Lopez-Bauman said. “Every single one of those individuals was eligible to reapply for coverage on Jan. 1, 2019, and fewer than 1,000 re-enrolled. Those in the higher income level of Medicaid eligibility are on and off the rolls frequently.”

Doug Badger is a senior fellow at the Galen Institute who served as a senior White House adviser in the George W. Bush administration. When so few individuals who were eligible for the Medicaid expansion in Arkansas re-enrolled, he said, they made a rational decision that they were better off without the benefits.

“If you don’t report any work activity at all, after being told that this would cause you to lose benefits, that suggests that you don’t value the benefits very highly. This is consistent with research showing that Medicaid recipients receive about 20 to 40 cents of benefits for every dollar of Medicaid spending,” Badger said.

Lopez-Bauman also said there is a cost for the individual and that person’s community when someone who receives Medicaid-expansion benefits and is able to work does not engage with the community in some way.

She also mentioned a report from the Buckeye Institute, which found that when single individuals without children are required to work to be eligible for Medicaid, their lifetime earnings increase. Men could see their incomes increase by $323,539, while women could gain $212,694.

Lindsay Killen, vice president of strategic outreach and communications for the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, said in an email that easing Michigan’s work and community engagement requirements would have negative consequences for Medicaid’s traditional, most vulnerable population.

“The program continues to balloon in enrollment of able-bodied adults who strain state resources needed to care for expectant mothers, the disabled and the elderly,” she said.