Our mission: To preserve, promote, improve and strengthen public schools for both current and future generations of students.

Michigan’s state Board of Education sent out 278 Freedom of Information Act requests earlier this year to charter schools and traditional school districts, too, asking for copies of a few common contracts.

It was a test of financial transparency, an effort to find out whether charter schools, which got $1.4 billion in state money last year, would give an adequate account of how that money was being spent.