Good news to report: the House voted to restore some of the funding for school safety that Democrat lawmakers cut from the budget at the end of June.

Gutting funding for school safety and mental health programs was an unpopular move (they cut it by 92 percent!), and Democrats have been feeling the heat ever since. It wasn’t just Republican lawmakers who have been criticizing the move: schools and parents have also been complaining about the bewildering decision.

I say bewildering because Democrat lawmakers and the governor cut more than $300 million for protecting students but managed to find $400 million for pork barrel spending such as free Wi-Fi for the Greektown Casino area.

All budgeting is about making tradeoffs, but to me this is a no-brainer; put the money toward protecting students.

(Remember also that Democrats dropped clawback language that would have let the state recoup $19 million from a grant given to a Whitmer political appointee who spent $4,500 of taxpayer money to buy a high-end coffeemaker. That is money that could have been put to better use by protecting students. I think the governor should use her column in this paper to explain why she disagrees.)

Republican lawmakers, despite being in the minority, have been making the school safety funding cut a big issue, and we put enough pressure on the Democrats that they caved and restored $125 million. That’s progress, and I voted in favor of the $125 million for school safety, but that’s still only about 40 percent of what the Democrats cut. We need to get to 100 percent restoration.

This was the first time that Democrats who control the House held a vote in three months; I’m glad that the pressure is working. But we need to keep the pressure on. There’s more work to do.

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Attention voters: Howell City Clerk Deanna Robson is notifying residents that absentee ballots will not be available until Monday, Oct. 7.