What started out as a $155 million tab in 2012 for public school employee pension and retirement health care costs will increase to $945 million by 2015, according to the Senate Fiscal Agency.

The driver of the escalating costs is MPSERS' unfunded liability. The pension system's unfunded liability was $25.8 billion in 2013, up from $24.3 billion in 2012. The state's payments also go to defray retiree health care costs. 

The costs for the Michigan Public School Employees Retirement System includes the $882.7 million the state is projecting to spend on retirement contributions for K-12 education in 2015 plus the costs for community colleges, libraries and higher education. 

One reason the costs are increasing is that school districts didn't meet the annual required contributions for pension costs, said James Hohman, assistant director of fiscal policy at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. In 2013, the state determined the cost was $1.9 billion, but districts paid $1.36 billion, according to state's 2013 annual audit.

Also, Hohman said that for years the Legislature has used "gimmicks" to get out of paying the full upfront costs of MPSERS.

For example, in 2007 the Legislature voted to mark assets to market rates, which allowed legislators to put less money into the pension system. In 2010, the state Legislature approved an early retirement incentive that saved $169 million on salaries but added an additional $1 billion in unfunded liabilities to MPSERS. Then, in 2012, the Legislature doubled the time the state has to pay off the early retirement incentive costs from the traditional five years to 10 years.

Hohman said that has led to a "catastrophic debt in the pension system that is sending our current legislators scrambling to find payments."

Leon Drolet, chairman of the Michigan Taxpayers Alliance, said government is good at finding a way to put off paying costs.

"Any tough decision that government can put off, it does put off," Drolet said. "If there is a way to kick the can down the road, they are brilliant at it. It always catches up with them. And the taxpayers pay for it."

(Editor's note: This story has been slightly edited since its original posting. Retiree health care is part of the escalating cost the state pays.)

There are 51 schools that have been in the bottom 5 percent of the Michigan Department of Education's Top-to-Bottom rankings three years in a row. Of those 51 schools, four were charter public schools and three of those four were closed.

Meanwhile, the conventional public schools on the list remain open.

"Charter schools have traditionally been the only public schools that have been held accountable for their performance," said Michigan Association of Public School Academies President Dan Quisenberry. "If they fail their students, they're closed down. That's never happened with a traditional public school, ever. What we need is this same level of accountability for all schools — charter or traditional."

Twenty-nine of the 51 schools that finished three consecutive years in the bottom 5 percent were conventional schools in the Detroit Public Schools district, or were former DPS schools that have recently been converted to charter public schools or are now under supervision of the Educational Achievement Authority. The EAA was created to help the lowest performing conventional public school districts improve.

Claims about a lack of accountability in charter public schools have been a topic in the news recently since the Detroit Free Press did a series on what it determined were problems with some charter public schools. The series quoted various officials insisting on more accountability for charter public schools in Michigan. It did not address problems with conventional public schools

The Free Press series looked at school districts that were in the bottom 5 percent in the state's Top-to-Bottom rankings, which evaluates student performance in mathematics, reading, writing, science, social studies and for graduation rates.

The three charter public schools that made the list that closed were: Academy of Flint in Flint Township; Aisha Shule/Web Dubois Preparatory Academy in Detroit; and the Center Literacy & Creativity in Detroit.

The Nah Tah Wahsh Public School Academy is still open. That charter school is located in Wilson in Menominee County and services primarily Potawatomi students.

The Michigan Association of Public School Academies has offered a "School Accountability Pledge" to conventional public schools asking those schools to adhere to the same accountability, transparency and oversight laws as the state's charter public schools. One of the standards in the pledge includes closing any school that is in the bottom 5 percent of the Top-to-Bottom list for four straight years.

As of July 7, no conventional school districts have signed the pledge.

"People concerned about Michigan's failing schools should be concerned about conventional schools," said Audrey Spalding, education policy director at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy.