Bay City Education Association

What do these bills do?

House Bill 4625 amends several sections of tenure law dealing with probationary and tenured teachers. The bill would allow a school board to dismiss a probationary teacher "at any time." Thus, during the first five years of employment, a teacher could be dismissed at any time by the school board. Even worse, a teacher who is returned to probationary status from tenure status could then be let go at any time.

Responding to ongoing attacks on public education and the middle class, thousands of MEA members traveled to Lansing on Saturday for MEA Action Day.

Toting hand-made signs with messages such as “I make Michigan work,” “Merit pay for politicians first,” and “My students listen better than my governor,” teachers, paraprofessionals, bus drivers, and social workers joined thousands of other union members at the Capitol to protest. Media reports estimated the crowd topped 10,000, making it the biggest rally yet this spring.

One of the architects of the 1994 Proposal A school finance reform has come out strongly against the changes to school funding that Governor Rick Snyder has proposed, saying the proposal is a misuse of school funds and probably illegal.

Former Rep. Glenn Oxender, who was a Republican representative from Sturgis for 16 years in the 1980s and 1990s, also said the proposal will wreck Michigan's higher education and community college system along with K-12 schools because it will make those schools dependent on the School Aid Fund.

The general public opposes most of Governor Rick Snyder's major tax and spending proposals, a new poll shows, and some, especially cutting spending on schools, are opposed by Republicans.

The results also show a large majority oppose the recently enacted emergency manager act and proposals to take away collective bargaining rights. In fact, a majority said they would vote for a ballot proposal that would guarantee the right of workers to organize and collectively bargain.

Call your state representative NOW!

The state House on Wednesday could move on House Bill 4325, legislation to cut nearly $1 billion from K-12 schools statewide. Also funded in this legislation are community colleges and public universities, which would receive a 15 percent funding cut.

Tenure guarantees due process to ensure a teacher isn’t dismissed for personal or political reasons.

• Tenured teachers are dismissed for incompetency and misconduct.
• Tenure protects good teachers from the politics of the job, such as nepotism and other unfair hiring and firing practices.
• Michigan’s tenure law was passed in 1937. The law initially was an opt-in and a local school board had to vote to be covered by the law.
• In the 1960s, the law was modified to allow tenure without exception for all teachers after a probationary period.
  

After stripping local officials of all power, state-appointed Manager calls himself “the angel of common sense”

A proposal supposedly intended to deter teachers from illegally striking would now strip them of their ability to teach for two years - or for life - and would kick out the employee's union for five years.

The penalties would apply even if no strike actually occurred, so long as it was determined that a strike was in the planning stages. The legislation states that neither a union member nor a union could "solicit or encourage any other person to strike" or "conspire with any other person to cause a strike."