The school year in Michigan was opened with teachers who returned to the classrooms in several districts – including Grand Rapids, Pontiac, Clintondale, Utica, Kalamazoo, Ludington, Walled Lake, Waterford, Howell, Brighton, Ortonville, Farwell, Milan, Northville and Birmingham. In Pontiac and Clintondale, both economically destroyed areas, the educators have concluded their second year in a row as part of the contracts expired.
Educational financing in the state has never recovered from the withdrawal of the financing of elementary and secondary school (Esser) by the biden-harris administration. The loss of pandemic aid funds was overthrown by inflation and increase in poverty and the reductions of the Trump government on the Federal Alleral School.
This year, Trump's budget cuts cost 81.6 million US dollars and were accompanied by a chaotic freezen and partially dismantled by around 171 million dollars to federal aid. The proposed federal budget on October 1 threatens to speed up these attacks considerably. At the state level, the Republicans of Michigan House are pushing a budget shortening of 1.4 billion US dollars for education in a transparent “Shell game”, which shifts money from the school aid fund to road construction.
Despite this coordinated attack on public education, the leaders of the 120,000 members Michigan Education Association (MEA) have not referred to a single strike in any of these districts, let alone educators for nationwide measures to stop the underfunding of public education.
Teachers who want to defend their work, livelihood, the right to public education and democratic rights should not lose time for the formation of independent rank list committees. These committees should immediately restore the trustworthy maxim: “No contract, no work.” You also have to monitor all negotiations and contracts and withdraw the power of the bureaucracy of the union, which blocks a struggle and enables the interests of corporate and financial terms to dictate conditions.
Educators clearly look for opportunities for fighting:
On Monday, September 8th, hundreds of teachers, parents and students gathered with the Grand Rapid's public schools Board meeting to support the fight for a decent contract. “We are least paid in the district that works in some of the most difficult environments,” said Whitley Morse, teacher at Ottawa Hills High School.
The teachers of the district rejected a board proposal that only offers an increase of 4.5 percent – less than half, which would be necessary to achieve parity with the same age in neighboring districts, and inadequate, to compensate for years of inflation.
Lisa Lee, an early childhood special educator at Buchanan Elementary, described the district's proposal as “belly beating”. “This is not a 4.5 percent (increase) of every teacher content,” she said Mlive. With 30 years of experience and a master's degree and a salary plan, which Lee said that Lee did not increase every year, she said: “Next year I will achieve less with her proposed salary (plan). I am going backwards. I will not get an increase.”
Grand Rapids has Michigan's worst five -year rate for teachers, with the resignation of the wage gaps with the promotion of records. As part of the refiner of the Grand Rapids Public Schools Facility Plan, 10 schools close by 2029.
In PontiacThe teachers went back to work for the second time in a row without a contract. On August 28, between 100 and 200 teachers showed their fights by carrying out a strike during the opening meeting of the district, wore protest signs and marched while the administrators spoke.
The Pontiac administrators also urge a comprehensive restructuring as part of the “Pontiac Schools Neumagined” in the league with consultant Donald Weatherspoon. The latter is notorious to destroy the public schools of the Muskegon Heights, to dismiss all teachers and to charter the district. The Pontiac Plan would close the schools, resolve the basic communities by grouping the classes into separate buildings and fitting violent awards and voice immersion programs.
The teachers emphasize that the decision -making process has been taken from a public point of view, with suggestions to be determined at the last minute for votes from the board before families or employees can react. In the meantime, district management has expanded – Pontiac pays two superintendents and several consultants over 600,000 US dollars this year, even if educators are communicated with “There is no money” for the staff in the classroom.
Teacher Clintondale Go to the second year without a contract. Since 2023, more than two thirds of his certified employees have resigned or retired when the negotiation talks and contract talks are another year. In a statement that condemns the MEA as an open instrument of management and the budget cut, Mike Ward, the current president of the Clintondale Education Education Association, admitted: “For 19 years we had only two years without a concession. When the district needed the most concessions, these people returned 4%; they did not move along the salary plan.”
Teachers are currently reporting that there were 250 days of “fruitless” negotiations, with district officers refusing to have real discussions. Special education was decimated and entire departments were exhausted. The union has submitted unfair indictment for work practice, organized a letter -writing campaign and a “walk -in” fees, but has never been asked for a strike vote for almost two decades.
It is not much different in the “wealthier” districts Northville And Birminghamwhere teachers work without a contract. The administrations cite budget uncertainty for their refusal to commit themselves to fundamental salary improvements or in the classroom standard.
On August 26, the Birmingham teachers protested in front of the High School in front of the Grove with “Work without a contract badge” in an information junction. The talks are still coordinated and negotiates the payment and the district, citing the uncertainty of the state budget and the “cuts at the federal level” for its position.
After the negotiations that started last winter have failed, 450 educators worked without a contract. They fight against stagnating payment and demand appropriate class sizes. The management of the union, instead of mobilizing broad support for educators, found that they did not want to “negotiate in public”, but said that they requested that they require a 3 percent wage increase and “competitive compensation”.
The teachers also call for the return of internship and recall rights as well as a fair discipline language and rights more than ten years ago under governor Rick Snyder. Without a contract, the teachers are also in the salary plan, and those who have recently earned additional registration information will not see any increase.
Enough is enough! These topics with which educators are confronted in all of Michigan are universal and existential: will public education survive? Pedagogues have seen decades of cuts for schools and employees who were imposed on both Democrats and Republicans.
The union devices issue inadequate demands, accept endless concessions and systematically block the efforts to combine the workforce for measures. The National Education Association (MEA parent organization) and the American Federation of Teachers covered up bidges and Harris when they left Esser funds out.
According to the Trump government, the AFT, NEA and its state and local companies have not undertaken anything to mobilize employees against the virtual elimination of the Ministry of Education, plans for universal vouchers and a systematic attack on all aspects of school financing. This is associated with censorship in schools, political lacquer tests for teachers in some countries and the promotion of religious indoctrination.
This complicity encourages Trump and the financial elite for which he speaks. It is also a warning. There is already a cross -party consensus among the Democrats and Republicans, and the oligarchs they serve are cut off trillions from schools (vouchers, chartas, charges, grants, programs, titles I and idea in block grants, etc.). The rich get the best educational allowance that you can buy while the working class is prepared for careers or the military. The beneficiaries will be Wall Street and the military budget.
If you know this policy, the Trump government will be included in the Major America cities of military opposition. While the first goal of these dictatorial measures were immigrants and their supporters, the same repressive methods against strikes, protests and the entire working class are used.
The NEA and AFT officials have shown that they will not fight. Like its allies in the Democratic Party, the Union bureaucrats fear nothing more than a mass movement of the working class against Trump, which could quickly escape their control. Their main concern is to keep their “seats at the table” and the legal right, collect fees and enrich themselves.
For this reason, a rank-and-file committee calls for the abolition of bureaucracy and the transfer of power and decision-making from the union apparatus to class teachers and other school employees. The defense of public education, which has been won over the centuries of the struggle, requires militant measures that regardless of both parties of the large business as part of the mobilization of the international working class against dictatorship, austerity measures and war.
The educator's rank-and-file committee, which is connected to the International Workers Alliance of Rangs and file, ask the educators to fight for the following demands:
- No contract, no work. Symphed control over negotiations. Complete preliminaries must be made available to the workforce in order to study them before a vote.
- Large wage increases to bring the teachers to the salary scale of similar professional workers. Protect health care and pensions.
- Full financing for schools. Full financing for special education. No cuts, school closings or privatization. Keep all course offers and programs and expand cultural enrichment. The billionaires expropriate and redirect billions into education, healthcare and social needs.
- Defense of immigrant families. End deportations. No national guard that occupies our cities.
- Build the rank-and-file committee and prepare for a general strike against the destruction of social and democratic rights.
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