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The Mackinac Center has launched a program to help local school board members and other public school officials respond to policy changes made by Gov. Whitmer and the Michigan Legislature.
Last year lawmakers turned back the clock by repealing the bipartisan reforms Michigan enacted during President Obama’s push for school reforms. These policies empowered school officials to hire, promote and reward excellent teachers. But unions opposed giving administrators this authority and urged lawmakers to revoke it, which they didin 2023.
This is disappointing, because research shows that filling classrooms with high-quality teachers is the most promising way to improve student achievement. School boards and administrators will, under the new policies, be hampered in hiring, evaluating and placing teachers. Unions will demand to bargain over these procedures and push for seniority-based policies. Decisions about pay, placement, promotion and layoffs could once again be determined solely by how long a teacher’s been on the job.
That might be a convenient way to make personnel decisions, but it does nothing to help kids learn.
The Mackinac Center will help school board members and other school officials by giving them resources to manage these changes. The Center has decades of experience analyzing state labor law and local collective bargaining policies.
Unions will urge school officials to put back everything the way it was before the Obama- era reforms. But there have been significant changes to public sector labor law since that era. School boards must be careful not to let unions circumvent the U.S. Supreme Court’s Janus decision, which provides all public school employees the First Amendment right not to be forced to be a member of or pay a union.
The Center will deliver guidance and recommendations to school board members as they renegotiate their union contracts. We hope to help them better understand the impact of seniority-based policies and why the Obama administration pushed for reform. Unions want to copy and paste their antiquated contract rules, but officials should stand firm in advocating for policies that put kids first.
Proportion of Michigan school districts with teacher contracts that contained prohibited and legally suspect language restricting discipline of teachers.
Amount some school districts provided as a bonus when they were required by law to pay teachers based on performance.
Number of Michigan districts that contract out for food, custodial or transportation services. Unions can negotiate to stop service privatization under new state laws.
