Students of every age and grade came together at the Capitol Wednesday.

"They could raise up the money so teachers won't get laid off," Third-Grader Abel Briones said.

They were there to face off with the legislature about restoring the cuts to k-12 funding.

"My sister is a freshman in high school and I think it's absolutely ridiculous that she shouldn't have the same opportunities in high school as I did when I was in high school," MSU Freshman Alyssa Kluge said.

But are lawmakers even listening?

State Representative Mark Meadows said the House sent a bill to the Senate that would at least lessen the impact on schools by using stimulus money.

"We can't act alone, we have sent it over to the Senate and they have failed to act," Meadows said. "This is the way to put pressure on them, this is a grass roots effort."

There's been no action so far, from the Senate. We tried to get comment from Majority Leader Mike Bishop Wednesday, but his office told us he was unavailable.

The rally Wednesday, like the many others held at the Capitol in the past few weeks, is to try to persuade legislators to restore money for this year, but at least one lawmaker says the whole system of funding schools in this state needs to be changed.

"The main revenue source is sales tax, what I've proposed is a lowering of the sales tax but a spreading of the tax to areas we don't usually collect from," Meadows said.

Meadows said taxing things like services could bring in about $652 million annually to Michigan schools.

But that's a long term idea -- what about now?

"Maybe they could bring the money back?" Fourth-Grader Alyssa Briones said.

That's the hope, these kids said they aren't ready to give up on it.

November 20th is the the next scheduled school-aid payment to schools. As it looks now, schools will get about $300 fewer dollars per pupil -- it'll be much worse for 20-j schools.