We regret the error

While the State of Michigan has stepped in to save the failing Pontiac schools from closing its doors due to lack of funding, they have NOT done this for Buena Vista schools. Rather, the federal government has, albeit in an absurdly lame fashion. The school is closed for the remainder of the school year but the feds are providing money for a voluntary “enhanced skills camp”.

Much more including video of Congressman Dan Kildee speaking about this issue on last night’s All In With Chris Hayes on MSNBC.

CorporationsFirst

The move by Michigan Republicans to tie teacher pay to their students scores on statewide tests is being portrayed by the corporatist, anti-teachers’ union group StudentsFirst as a system to “reward excellent teachers”. The recently sent out a deceptive email encouraging people sign a petition to support these bills which are simply an effort to depress teacher salaries even further.

Click through to see the deceptive email.

I’m sure another corporate tax cut is all that is needed

I mentioned this briefly in my post this morning about Buena Vista schools being closed for the fourth consecutive day but now the Detroit News is reporting it as a near-certainty: the Pontiac School District is out of money and will not meet their next payroll. They also have no money to pay vendors that provide custodial, transporation, and other services.

Click through for more.

Just not raining hard enough in Buena Vista Township, I guess… This is front page of the Buena Vista School District website this morning. While it says that school will be closed on Thursday, apparently nobody has been to work yet today, either, because the school is still closed today. This is the fourth day the school has been closed […]

Oh, I see how this works

Over the past two years, Michigan Republicans have stripped over a billion dollars from schools and are working to defund them another $825.1 million this year, as well. They’ve also reduced teachers’ benefits and made their ability to collectively bargain for better wages, benefits and working conditions more difficult.

Now that they’ve done so much to make a teacher’s job so much more difficult, one Republican is ready to make their pay primarily based on student progress. Current law says that teacher pay should be using job performance and job accomplishments as a significant factor. House Bill 4625, introduced by Republican Pete Lund, would make teacher pay based primarily on these factors.

More after the jump.

No need to know math if you’re working at Walmart, I guess… Republican legislation was passed out of the House Education Committee yesterday that reduced graduation requirements by allowing students to graduate without learning a foreign language or taking mathematics through Algebra 2. House Bill 4465 would allow students to replace the Algebra 2 requirement with completion of a “formal […]

Make yourself heard

As I reported yesterday, the Michigan House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure voted to eliminate the sales tax on aviation fuel. This bill is in addition to House Bill 4539 which if passed, will eliminate the sales tax on gasoline sales in our state. My piece said that this would take $770.1 million out of the School Aid Fund (SAF). However, that amount is only for the repeal of the gasoline tax. According to a statement by State Rep. Brandon Dillon, yesterday’s repeal of the aviation fuel tax will remove another $55 million . That means if both bills are passed, $825.1 million more will be taken from our kids’ schools. This represents over two-thirds of the $1.2 billion Governor Snyder has asked for for road repair.

Click through for more including details on how you can make your voice heard on this issue.

Yet somehow they’ll blame the teachers…

The Michigan township of Buena Vista, in the news recently for its racist Township Clerk, is back in the news today with the announcement that the school district has closed its doors over a month before the end of the school year. Why? Turns out the school district had taken $580,000 in state funding for a program for incarcerated youths that it no longer runs. With an outstanding bill of $400,000, the state cut off its funding and it now has no money.

The district’s 27 teachers had agreed to work without pay for a week while the district sorted out its mess but, this morning, the schools were closed.

Details after the jump.

This is getting ridiculous

Michigan Republicans are getting ready to inflict further catastrophic damage on our state’s schools with the passage of a package of bills designed to pay for road and bridge repair, a major priority of Governor Rick Snyder. The bills say nothing about education or the School Aid Fund but the impact is there to the tune of more than $770.1 million.

Click through for all the gory details and information on how you can take action TODAY!

That’s not a relationship built for education

Last year, Michigan’s Republican-dominated legislature passed a bill that was then signed into law by Governor Snyder that expands cyber schools in our state. Michigan already has nearly a quarter of the county’s charter schools and upwards of 80% of them are for-profit, run by corporations who make decisions based on their impact on the corporate profit statement.

I’ve been concerned about this ever since the law was passed because cyber schools rob our children of the human contact and relationships that are essential for helping them become happy, productive adults with the social skills needed to be successful. The bill was, ironically, part of a package of bills the Republicans, without a trace of irony, called Parent Empowerment Education Reform (PEER.) Except that kids who “attend” cyber schools won’t actually have any peers, at least not the kind of peer you can interact directly with.

Rita Pierson is an educator who feels deeply about this topic. A teacher for 40-years, she has come to see the essential value of the relationships teachers develop with their students. She gave a TED Talk recently where she speaks in direct terms about this topic and her message is one legislators in Michigan would benefit from hearing.

Watch it after the jump.

Coming soon to an Education Achievement Authority school near you?

Alternet has a frightening piece up this week about the experience of a small, impoverished California town that utilized a “parent trigger” to give its school system over to a private group. The piece, “Exposed: The Billionaire-Backed Group Strong-Arming Parents into Destroying Their Kids’ Public Schools” is worth your time to read.

The story is one of a corporate-funded drive to privatize schools in poor areas. What’s frightening is that there is legislation for doing the same here in Michigan and there is nothing in the bill that would prevent making these schools profit centers for for-profit corporate education companies. Funded by groups like the Walton Family Foundation, the Gates Foundation and the Broad foundation, a group called “Parent Revolution” used strong arm tactics and bullying to convince poor residents of Adelanto, California to privatize their school system.

Click through for more.