State budget office officials presented Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s seventh executive budget recommendation to the House and Senate appropriations committees Wednesday morning.

Beyond a historic 4.1% hike in per-student funding and a bid to intensify academic transparency, the list of recommendations would largely uphold existing priorities and programs for 1.4 million public school students.

Without the benefit of a politically friendly Legislature for the final two years of her tenure, Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer skipped Thursday’s rollout of an $83.5 billion Fiscal Year (FY) 2026 budget proposal,