Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder's newest education reform package could be released this week and is expected to include Snyder's plan to turn all of Michigan's public schools into schools of choice, the Detroit Free Press reports.

Under this proposal, a system of choice would mean exactly that: Though schools could give preference to those living in their attendance zones, Michigan would otherwise recognize no artificial district boundaries. Schools would have to open their doors to any students if they had the space.

As the Free Press notes, the proposal is likely to bring together strange bedfellows in opposition. The Detroit school district is warning that Snyder's plan would exacerbate the current exodus of students trying to get out of the troubled urban system. Meanwhile, officials in affluent school districts, such as Grosse Pointe and Bloomfield Hills, are fighting as aggressively.

As the plan wends its way through the Michigan Legislature, newspapers will likely uncover more disturbing comments than even this observation from Bloomfield Hills superintendent Rob Glass, who told reporters late last spring that his residents pay “extra taxes to provide extra levels of education to their local community. To make that same option available to others who have not made that sacrifice or that choice to invest doesn’t seem fair.”

Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder's plan to make any open seat in any public school district available to students no matter where they live has many school systems understandably anxious, as The Detroit News reports in a lengthy story today. The News highlights the fear among struggling school districts, who have the most to lose when parents decide to vote with their feet, but its reporters unearthed another fact that speaks more to the exclusivity exhibited by the suburban districts that have kept their doors closed to all but their wealthiest residents.

School districts in Michigan have been able to open their doors to students in other systems since 1996, but most have restricted enrollment to students living at least in the same county, and 11 have refused to participate in the state's Schools of Choice effort altogether. Those 11, the News has found, also spend the most per pupil of any district in the state, and they consist primarily of Michigan's toniest suburbs -- Gross Pointe in Wayne County and Bloomfield Hills in Oakland County, for instance.

Bloomfield Hills superintendent Rob Glass was more reserved in his comments about Snyder's plan in today's story, but he recently showed the Detroit Free Press how his district is oblivious to the challenges facing low-income families. Residents in Glass' district pay "extra taxes to provide extra levels of education to their local community," the superintendent said. "To make that same option available to others who have not made that sacrifice or that choice to invest doesn't seem fair."

However the Legislature decides to act on Snyder's plan, here's hoping its members have a different sense of what constitutes fairness in public education from Mr. Glass.