Michigan educators took cuts personally
To educate younger MEA members, veteran Wayne-Westland teacher Tim Sullivan made a video of news clips from 2011 when Gov. Rick Snyder and a Republican-controlled Legislature cut $1 billion out of the state education budget.
“They talked about the cuts as ‘shared sacrifice,’ but then they also gave businesses a $1.4 billion tax break,” Sullivan said. “They filled the (budget) hole on the backs of public employees in terms of salaries, pensions and health care — nothing about the sacrifice was shared.”
In following years, new laws stripped educators of collective bargaining rights, and the state used controversial Emergency Manager laws to threaten and take over financially distressed districts.
In Wayne-Westland schools, where Sullivan grew up and returned to teach, the union took a 5% pay cut and four-year pay freeze to avoid imposition of an emergency manager as the district absorbed a crushing $470 per-pupil loss in funding.
An 18-year member of the bargaining team, Sullivan said, “Not only did I take that pay cut; my wife works in the same district, so we got hit twice. And we had two children, (ages) four and one at the time. We thought we had these good salaries, and we would continue working up the ladder.”
Now Sullivan can’t look away as Snyder spends millions of his personal fortune on the 2026 election to promote his ideas for “fixing” what he calls “failing” public schools. “There’s this odd obsession I have with Snyder, because what he did was so personal to me.”
The 25-year fourth-grade teacher retired in June, in part due to a Snyder-era law forcing educators to shoulder ever-increasing health care costs. He warns younger educators: “Just because it’s in the contract doesn’t mean that’s guaranteed.
“It’s important for our members to vote, and choose candidates who support public education.”
QUOTABLES
“If you didn’t have your bus drivers, your secretaries, your parapros or associate teachers, you couldn’t run these classrooms. But we still get overlooked.”
Shanee Elerson has been a preschool associate teacher for 12 years in an Oak Park Great Start Readiness Program, helping youngsters learn through a play-based curriculum.
School support staff continue to do vital work without the pay, benefits and working conditions they deserve, so Elerson joined MEA’s ESP Bill of Rights campaign to fight for change.
Read all of the stories in our special report, ELECTIONS MATTER >> by Brenda Ortega, MEA Voice Editor:
