Now that the election is over, you don’t hear much about the massive cuts Republicans have made to public schools in Michigan. Without someone like Mark Schauer to constantly put it out into the mediasphere, it’s simply no longer being discussed. Well, except by bloggers like me whose “intellectual content” Gov. Snyder gives “a very low number” on a scale […]

Republican House Speaker Jase Bolger wants you to believe that he’s found a magical way to fund road repairs without raising your taxes! While it’s true that your gas taxes and sales taxes won’t increase, the entire scheme is based on taking nearly a billion dollars more from schools each year. Local municipalities will take a huge hit, too. How […]

Welcome to Michigan under Republican rule Flint schools have been in financial trouble since 2011 when it first went into debt. In 2012, they eliminated 460 teachers and staff positions. In May of this year, they laid off 91 more teachers and staff and slashed benefits of the remaining teachers as an alternative to a 19% pay cut. Later in […]

Imagine this scenario: you’re taking your third-grader to school and you look over and there’s a guy in front of the school with a handgun strapped to his hip. What do you do? Is this a crazy guy who is going to start shooting the place up? Is it just a gun-loving lady making a point about her Second Amendment […]

I had a conversation with Ann Arbor-area state Representative Jeff Irwin recently and he brought up a point few people are discussing related to higher education. There’s been a lot of focus on how much money is in Gov. Snyder’s budget for education and Gov. Snyder wants everyone to believe that he has put MORE money into his education budget […]

Last month I posted a piece about a Rick Snyder finally finding a teacher who would support him in public. It turned out to be his neighbor at his million-dollar lake house and that post that has enjoyed over 27,000 views. Well, Gov. Snyder has found a second teacher willing to do a commercial for him. This time it’s another […]

After claiming he was going to run a strictly positive campaign, Gov. Rick Snyder has a new negative attack ad out that features a retired teacher named Linda Thaler. Turns out that she lives literally right next door to Snyder’s vacation home on Gun Lake in Middleville, Michigan. The reality is that, despite Ms. Thayer’s contention otherwise, her neighbor and […]

This post has been updated to add details regarding the reason Timothy Chargois was fired as superintendent of Beaumont ISD in Texas. When John Covington was hired to head up the Education Achievement Authority – Governor Rick Snyder’s failed education experiment on Detroit kids – he left behind a failed school district in Kansas City. Some Kansas City school board […]

Last month, the for-profit charter corporation Mosaica announced that it was breaking its contract, signed under an Emergency Manager, to run the entire Muskegon Heights school district. Why? Because they couldn’t make a profit off of running a school system in an economically depressed community. I know. You’re shocked. “To be brutally honest – they had to be brutally honest […]

Spin all you want, Governor. Voters KNOW. Rick Snyder and the Michigan Republicans want you to believe that they have done more to help fund education than any ever before in our state. By comparing what they are spending to what the state spent when we were receiving funds from the Stimulus program that offset prior spending, they show you […]

Republican Governor Rick Snyder is spending an enormous amount of effort trying to convince Michigan residents that he has increased school funding. In reality, it’s true. The state of Michigan is spending a bit more now than when Snyder took office. But that’s only because he includes temporary federal funding as part of the Stimulus spending legislation sent to states […]