MEA

Twelve school groups on Tuesday threw their support behind a proposal by House Speaker Andy Dillon (D-Redford Twp.) to create one health care pool for all public sector employees, saying that members of their organizations have the same benefits as teachers and understand major reforms are needed.

"Without meaningful reform, districts will be hard pressed to offer affordable benefits at all in the future," said Michigan Association of School Administrators Executive Director William Mayes. "We want to reform the system before the system stops working for teachers and kids."

The House labor committee today began taking testimony on legislation that would allow school employee unions to negotiate over any outsourcing a district may or may not undertake in the realm of non-instructional employees.

HB 4219, sponsored by Rep. Fred MILLER (D-Mt. Clemens) is identical to legislation adopted by the House last year which died in the Senate. The legislation amends Public Act 112 of 1994 that removed the outsourcing of services from the subjects which can be collectively bargained.

Specifically, the existing act includes the following prohibited subject:

The Michigan Education Association agrees with the call to improve the state's lowest performing schools, said spokesperson Doug Pratt, but the state needs to provide those schools with a picture of what is going wrong and some ideas for fixing those problems before removing the staff or closing the building.

The federal No Child Left Behind Act requires audits of a school's program to assess its needs, but Mr. Pratt said information the MEA has collected shows of 48 schools that appear to qualify as failing under bills under consideration in the House (see related story), 39 have not had such an audit.

And he argued the audits the Department of Education is now using because of staffing shortages do not provide the information schools would need to improve.

After two months of tweaking and last-minute word changes, the State Board of Education today approved and sent to the Legislature a report that noted the progress public school academies (PSA) are making in Michigan.

The Board's last minute changes watered down the faint praise given to charter schools in some areas, but the report stuck to its basic premise that they are doing better.

The Board heard, but ignored, a request from the Michigan Education Association (MEA) to delay approving the report today because of what the teachers' organization saw as flawed methodology and data that did not support the report's conclusions.

We have not yet taken a position in regard to House Bill 4410 (The Sheltrown bill). None of the statewide associations with whom we work have either. The superintendent association has not. The ISD superintendent association has not. The school board's association has not. The MEA has not. The Department of Education has not. The MI Chamber has not. And, no legislative caucus has as well. Yet, MASSP is threatened by some from the CTE community to support the bill or lose their membership.

The Michigan Education Association (MEA) retirement plan died today, but a union official said Senate Education Committee Chair Wayne KUIPERS (R-Holland) deserves an "A" for effort.

The plan would have increased benefits for retirees in an attempt to weed out high-end salaries, but the Senate Fiscal Agency (SFA) said it could have cost the Michigan Public School Employees Retirement System (MPSERS) $1.3 billion over five years.

SB 0255 was on life support last week after Kuipers canceled a committee meeting due to Senate Majority Leader Mike BISHOP's (R-Rochester) ongoing concerns about the bill's cost (See "Senate Leadership Stalls Teacher Retirement Bill," 3/19/09). But Kuipers and MEA officials insisted the plan wasn't dead until today.

The Fiscal Analysis ordered by the Senate Education committee was completed on March 16th.

FROM THE REPORT: Costs

Table 1 outlines the potential impact of SB 255 (S-1) on MPSERS. According to the Office of Retirement Services (ORS), 55,000 employees are eligible to retire immediately, and an additional 7,000 would be eligible if they purchased service credit. If all 62,000 of those eligible members retired, the present value of the increased retirement benefits would be $6.3 billion. However, under the bill, the maximum present value of additional future benefits would be capped at $1.5 billion. Under this cap on benefits, a maximum of 29,258 (on average) would be permitted to retire. It is possible that fewer members than the maximum would take advantage

Michigan Education Association Has Plan: Get Teachers to Retire
Better pensions sought for 9,000
BY CHRIS CHRISTOFF AND PEGGY WALSH-SARNECKI • FREE PRESS STAFF WRITERS • JANUARY 28, 2009

LANSING -- Thousands of public school employees would retire with sweetened pensions under a plan by the state's largest teachers union to trim costs from school districts and allow them to hire new, younger teachers.

The plan, to be announced today by a bipartisan group of lawmakers, would save schools statewide nearly $411 million next year and $1.7 billion over 10 years, according to the Michigan Education Association.

Tim Skubick: MEA makes its ire known
Granholm takes hit for losing insurance fight
• APRIL 11, 2008 • FROM LANSING STATE JOURNAL
There's a nice symmetry to the relationship between the governor and the state's largest teachers' union. But that's the only nice thing about it.
The Michigan Education Association was the first teachers' union to jump on the Jennifer Granholm bandwagon for governor. Now, it is the first union to jump off.
Some good folks at the MEA have soured on JMG.