Across the nation, many classrooms, schools, and districts are going 1:1. Though a 1:1 program might look different from place to place, they all have at least one thing in common: every student gets their own computing device. In some cases, students receive a laptop computer while others get tablets. Regardless of the device issued to students, 1:1 programs are […]

“Why have to work through all of the messiness of this thing called ‘democracy’?” I have written extensively about Michigan’s “Education Achievement Authority”. It as formed in September of 2012 as an interlocal agreement with Eastern Michigan University as a school district comprised of Michigan’s most failing schools. Originally it had 15 of Detroit’s worst schools. New legislation, House Bill […]

The Republicans’ goal is to “try to find a way to educate students on the cheap” Photo credit: Anne C. Savage, special to Eclectablog Michigan Republicans have made their education “reform” plan quite clear: slash funding to traditional public schools, privatize schools to for-profit corporations, and knee-cap teachers to prevent them from collectively bargain for decent wages and benefits. This […]

This MUST stop

The story of 22-year Cody Bailey being installed as president of a for-profit charter school in Michigan (posts are HERE and HERE) has rekindled my outrage about the demonization of teachers and the systematic kneecapping and dismantling of our public school system here in Michigan. Operating under the guise of “education reform”, corporatists like Cody Bailey, the Mackinac Center, and the DeVos family are engaging in an unsubtle effort to convert our nation’s schools into profit centers for corporate “education” businesses. Their approach has three primary components.

Click through for much, much more.

Good people are fighting every day for Michigan’s students. This organization is among them. Just when you begin to despair over the seemingly endless battles public education is facing in Michigan, you find a reason to feel optimistic. In Pontiac, one of the Michigan school districts that’s struggling the most, an organization called Bound Together is providing an environment where […]

Follow your tax money (right into the pockets of for-profit school shareholders)

Yesterday, the same day that we learned that the Snyder administration had bowed to the suitable outrage and national media attention they had received over the closing of the Buena Vista school district due to lack of money and had released funds, we also learned that two Michigan high schools are closing as well. These to high schools, Albion and Inkster, won’t reopen in the fall because their school districts cannot afford to do so. In Albion, “officials hope to reach a deal with nearby Marshall for students to attend high school there”. In Inkster, the high school will be run by a charter.

And yet, in school districts across the state, we see new buildings and renovations going on. Flat-screen televisions in the hallways, brand new campuses, state-of-the-art sports facilities. How is this possible? How is it that students in one district can go to school in a cutting-edge, shiny new facility while students in other districts see their schools shuttered for lack of funding? It can be explained by how we fund our schools and the shiny new buildings and hallway televisions don’t always tell the full story.

Just not raining hard enough in Buena Vista Township, I guess… This is front page of the Buena Vista School District website this morning. While it says that school will be closed on Thursday, apparently nobody has been to work yet today, either, because the school is still closed today. This is the fourth day the school has been closed […]

Make yourself heard

As I reported yesterday, the Michigan House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure voted to eliminate the sales tax on aviation fuel. This bill is in addition to House Bill 4539 which if passed, will eliminate the sales tax on gasoline sales in our state. My piece said that this would take $770.1 million out of the School Aid Fund (SAF). However, that amount is only for the repeal of the gasoline tax. According to a statement by State Rep. Brandon Dillon, yesterday’s repeal of the aviation fuel tax will remove another $55 million . That means if both bills are passed, $825.1 million more will be taken from our kids’ schools. This represents over two-thirds of the $1.2 billion Governor Snyder has asked for for road repair.

Click through for more including details on how you can make your voice heard on this issue.

Yet somehow they’ll blame the teachers…

The Michigan township of Buena Vista, in the news recently for its racist Township Clerk, is back in the news today with the announcement that the school district has closed its doors over a month before the end of the school year. Why? Turns out the school district had taken $580,000 in state funding for a program for incarcerated youths that it no longer runs. With an outstanding bill of $400,000, the state cut off its funding and it now has no money.

The district’s 27 teachers had agreed to work without pay for a week while the district sorted out its mess but, this morning, the schools were closed.

Details after the jump.

This is getting ridiculous

Michigan Republicans are getting ready to inflict further catastrophic damage on our state’s schools with the passage of a package of bills designed to pay for road and bridge repair, a major priority of Governor Rick Snyder. The bills say nothing about education or the School Aid Fund but the impact is there to the tune of more than $770.1 million.

Click through for all the gory details and information on how you can take action TODAY!

Aye, aye, aye…

By now, most my readers know that the Republicans in Michigan have carved roughly $1 billion out of our state education budget and are ready to reduce the per-pupil funding by another $150/student this year. But what you probably don’t know that things have gotten so bad in our state’s schools that some of them don’t even have toilet paper for our kids to use when they go to school.

I’m not kidding. Follow me over the jump.