Gov. Gretchen Whitmer last year spawned a new commission she’d tasked with identifying ways to turn back the clock on Michigan’s looming demographic crisis — our population is both growing older and shrinking — by identifying ways to make our state the kind of place young people want to work and parents want to raise a family.

After months of “work,” the so-called Growing Michigan Together Council published its initial report.

So much for that.

The three people in Lansing who’ve been paying attention to the council aren’t surprised. The governor’s group suffers from the same challenge facing the state. Only one of its initial members was even younger than 40. That single youngster is a Harvard grad and the managing director at a venture capital fund. Hardly your typical Michigander struggling to pay for her kids’ groceries.

No one expected the council’s report would be a magic bullet. It isn’t. Michigan is still 49th in the nation for population growth. (That’s not good).

If they’d been paying attention, though, observers might have hoped the report would find a way to avoid making a bad situation worse. Parents like me might have even hoped they’d find some sort of indication authors took the challenges facing our public schools seriously.

We’re all left disappointed.

The council’s initial report comes across like an overly wordy term paper written by a college kid who didn’t do the reading. Lots of buzz words. Long sentences. DYNAMISM.

Its recommendations, though, read like a wish list for any generic Democrat’s statewide political campaign.

Bigger government. Higher taxes. No accountability.

Parents are only looking for a little recognition. We want to know that Lansing finally gets it. We want to know they understand that Gov. Whitmer’s COVID-19 school lockdowns really hurt our kids. We want to know that they know how much damage they’ve done.

We are looking for options for our kids. They’re looking for school choice, accountability, transparency, and direct student support. None of that made the council’s draft.

Sure, they paid lip service to public schools. They propose funding to build new buildings and to help districts overcome debt.

Can we be honest, though? Even if the Legislature delivered everything Whitmer’s council is asking for, our kids wouldn’t see a dime of it reflected in their classroom learning.

Your typical Michigan parent doesn’t even know what “district stabilization” is, and, if he did, he wouldn’t care.

Want to keep parents in Michigan for the long haul? Convince us you’re never going to lock our kids out of the classroom again. Convince us you’re more interested in helping our kids do better than you are in tearing them down so they don’t ruin the curve. Convince us you take local schools’ performance seriously.

The Michigan Department of Education was months late delivering public school A-F report cards they were legally required to provide to parents. Why? Is it because our local schools are failing our kids and they don’t want to admit it? Are public school districts just allowed to break the law to hide test scores from parents? Do transparency laws matter at all?

Your typical Michigan parent might not have paid a minute of attention to the governor’s laughable population council, but you better believe they’ve noticed what’s going on with their child’s performance at school. You better believe they’re going to do everything they possibly can to help their children succeed.

Unfortunately for the state of Michigan, given what’s happening on the ground and the administration’s refusal to come clean, that’s the kind of reality that only makes the population council’s work more difficult.

Beth DeShone is executive director of the Great Lakes Education Project.