MEA President statement on passage of historic K-12 budget investing in Michigan’s students
EAST LANSING — The following statement can be attributed to MEA President Paula Herbart in response to today’s passage of the 2021-22 K-12 school budget by the Legislature:
“Equalizing the state foundation grants for our children’s education is a major step in the right direction for school funding. We appreciate the leadership from Gov. Whitmer to bring forward this important change, and for lawmakers from both parties embracing a fix to a long-standing injustice.
“This is by no means an end to the fight for adequate and equitable funding for our schools. After decades of inequity and underinvestment in education, we must remain committed to fixing our school funding system so it provides the resources for every student to succeed, no matter where they live or what their learning needs are.
“In concert with critical federal pandemic relief funding, this budget gives us a chance to show our communities what can be accomplished for our students when schools are provided with funding to be successful – and what still needs to be done to provide a world-class education for every Michigan student.”
Extremely upset and concerned that you are pushing critical race theory on our Michigan public schools!
This Leftist Woke ideology has no business being in the classroom and more than half the country agrees! Stop with this indoctrination of our children!
Stop pushing this RACIST AGENDA on young children and let parents teach their own values and morals to their own children!
ASHAMED OF YOU AS “EDUCATIONAL LEADERS”!
This was a terrific bipartisan budget today. There is no doubt about that.
I would like Governor Whitmer to put some of her political capital on the line to restore the damage that Republicans did to the teacher pension in 2013. Specifically, she needs to ask the Legislature to roll back the pension tax (this affects all pensioners, not just teachers), return the retiree contribution to their health insurance plan to 10% (instead of the current 20%). The average teacher pension of $28,026 (2016-2017) is way too low to expect someone to pay 20% of their healthcare premiums and then deductibles and co-pays on top of that. And teachers need to go back to contributing 4.6% of their salaries to the pension system, not the current 10% that they need to contribute in order keep their multiplier at the modest 1.5% that it already was. It’s no wonder why teachers are retiring as soon as they meet the qualifications. Paying 10% of your salary into the system is so exorbitant that you will never recoup your retirement contributions if you keep working after you are eligible to retire.
Furthermore, all teachers that have been placed in the newer, worse teacher retirement tiers need to be placed in tier 1, while the other tiers are abolished.