The state House on Thursday passed a package of bills to bring back educators’ voices to workplace decisions, restoring collective bargaining rights taken away under a GOP-controlled legislature and former Gov. Rick Snyder a dozen years ago. This critically important package of bills passed along party lines and now moves to the Senate. Take a […]
Last November, Grosse Ile fifth grader Ava felt conflicted emotions when her teacher – MEA member Jaime Churches – won election to the state House of Representatives. She wanted Churches to win, but she didn’t want her to leave the classroom. On Thursday, with the school year drawing to a close, the youngster’s eyes lit […]
UPDATE: The House Labor Committee passed House Bills 4354-4357 on Thursday, May 25. The legislation will now proceed to the full House for consideration, likely in June. In the early hours of Thursday morning, over a dozen MEA members from across the state made the drive to Lansing to make their voices heard in the […]
By Brenda Ortega MEA Voice Editor Five years ago when Nadia Rodriguez took a teaching job in Flint Community Schools, she knew world-changing history – the Flint Sit-Down Strike of 1937 – had played out on hallowed ground across the street from her K-3 Montessori classroom at Durant Tuuri Mott Elementary. A Flint native who […]
Earlier this year, Gov. Whitmer proposed a $20.6 billion plan for the state education budget for the coming year. This week, the State House and Senate put forward their own proposals for funding Michigan schools, with the House recommending a $19.6 billion plan and the Senate at $20.76 billion. Wherever they end up, public schools […]
The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic rippled out into nearly every aspect of our lives, and public education was no exception. Michigan’s students and educators have faced unprecedented challenges in the aftermath of extended periods of remote learning and emotional trauma inflicted by a worldwide pandemic. To help alleviate the impact and ensure our neighborhood […]
In the wake of deadly school shootings in Oxford and at Michigan State University, which sparked tremendous outrage and public activism, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer on Thursday signed into law broadly popular and commonsense measures to address the epidemic of gun violence. The new laws require universal background checks for firearm purchases and mandate safe storage […]
Educators had numerous workplace rights stripped away from them by the previous governor and Legislature more than a decade ago — and you can draw a direct line between those mean-spirited attacks on school employees and today’s shortage of teachers, education support professionals, school mental health professionals, and other critical positions. But times have changed. […]
In an update to a study from 2018 that provided the most comprehensive look ever at the adequacy of school funding in Michigan, a report issued Wednesday concludes the state is under-funding public education by $4.5 billion. More than 90% of students go to schools without adequate resources, according to the report co-authored by MEA […]
On March 31, state Rep. Carol Glanville (D-Walker) met with the board of MEA’s Michigan Association of Higher Education (MAHE) to discuss issues affecting colleges across the state. As the Chair of the House Higher Education Committee, Glanville has spent 30 years in the field of education as both a teacher and administrator, working with […]
