(1) Gov. Snyder’s proposed budget would slash at least $470 per pupil from every school district in the state, but in some districts it's closer to $1,000 per pupil when other K‐12 funding cuts are included. His budget would also raid the School Aid Fund to pay for community colleges and higher education (which also take steep funding cuts). These cuts will sacrifice the educational future of more than a million Michigan students. Class sizes will skyrocket given drastic layoffs, important student programs will be eliminated, and school employees will continue to be called on to make concessions, on top of the more than $1 billion given up in salary and benefits over the past few years by those school employees.
(2) As part of his budget plan, Gov. Snyder also wants to eliminate the Earned Income Tax Credit and do away with pension tax exemptions, effectively raising taxes on the working poor and on retirees – all to pay for a massive business tax cut he’s proposing for his corporate CEO cronies.
(3) Gov. Snyder has signed into law emergency manager legislation that will destroy the collective bargaining rights of our members and the local control of democratically elected bodies in school districts, cities and other local government entities that are in “financial crisis” (crises that are being caused by the aforementioned budget cuts).
(4) House Bill 4152, which is pending in the Senate, would freeze step increases and district health care costs when a contract expires, forcing school employees to give up salary and pay any insurance increases out of pocket. It also bans any retroactive contract settlements that would address that financial loss later on, once a new contract has been settled.
(5) House Bill 4306 would mandate that school districts request bids to outsource all transportation, custodial and food service work, threatening the livelihoods of tens of thousands of dedicated education support professionals.
(6) Bills are also being considered to require all school employees to pay at least 20% of their health insurance premiums and slash salaries by 5%, regardless of any local concessions.
Huh.
I'm trying to keep a shred of a positive outlook here -- more than likely, after the legislative dust settles, I'll still have a job, a job I enjoy that usually doesn't feel like a job, and I own my small house and old car, and I have most of my health, and blah blah blah -- but it's some pretty depressing shit for a lot of people, including members of my family. The recent machinations in Wisconsin will be struck down, piece by piece, until Scott Walker is recalled and the Republicans are truncated, but this avarice and cruelty seems to be passing by the major media, perhaps because of the speed of the happenings. The mendacity is stunning, and I almost don't know where to start, so I'll try to go point by point.
(ONE) The piece of K-12 education least understood by the average Michigander is simple: much of the teacher's role in K-12 is classroom management, otherwise known as getting the kids to behave in a somewhat civil fashion. It's not teaching, or connecting with kids on an intellectual level; it's as if the playground has come indoors, and the teacher doesn't even have a whistle to quell the cacophony and conflict. In my grandfather's day, the solution was simple: find the kid that's the biggest fuck-up and beat his ass in front of all the other kids. (It's a variation on the Chairman Mao doctrine of killing one to silence a thousand.) Obviously, corporal punishment doesn't happen today, but without any meaningful means to decrease antisocial behavior and increase prosocial behavior, a class full of thirty teenagers with technology is a difficult landscape to navigate. Now picture a class full of sixty teenagers, from different cliques and social classes, and you can see situations going from bad to worse. And that's only one of the many results of cutting funding, where situations of scarcity will gain momentum.
(TWO) Tax cuts are great in spirit -- I sure don't like to pay the property taxes twice a year -- but when you don't have revenue for basic services, the general quality of life coarsens. The elementary math of credits and debits holds true everywhere, but we've been sold this bullshit bill of goods that we can cut taxes and maintain our quality of life, which is patently and verifiably false. Basic services turn to shit pretty quickly. And if you were a family man in a corporation, why would you ever want to move to a place that has shoddy schools and scary neighborhoods? Well, the reality is that the tax cuts would be geographically targeted to favor corporations in safe suburban areas with private schools and the only well-provided-for police and fire departments for miles. Meanwhile, eliminating tax breaks for poor and elderly citizens -- as well as tax breaks for things like the film industry, which is one of the few vibrant draws for young people in Michigan -- means the culture and class lines are drawn, clear as day. And there seems to be a lot more people on one side of that line -- the have-nots and soon-to-be-have-nots -- then on the slim scant side of Well-To-Do Avenue.
(THREE) It's galling hypocrisy to state that CEO contracts with eight-figure bonuses and nine-figure "golden parachutes" are legally binding (my favorite logic here is that "we can't attract the best talent without the best cash," as if it wasn't the "best talent" that gamed the system in the first place) but the contracts generated from collective bargaining -- which are much much much less than those vast lottery-like sums -- can be obliterated at will by these unaccountable "emergency manager" people. Actually, this one worries me the least, because I assume this vast overreach will be invalidated by the courts, but to have the King Kong balls to even try this in the first place shows the contempt for educators that permeates the current sphere of state governance.
(FOUR) See (THREE), but more incrementally targeted to collective bargaining. Sadly, this is the best way to erode the mild gains that collective bargaining has offered, and the most likely to sneak through without much of a peep. That is, except for the thousands negatively impacted to the tune of thousands of dollars per year, thousands of dollars that won't go back into the Michigan economy. Because educators pay taxes and buy shit, too.
(FIVE) Here's how outsourcing works: provide the lowest quality product that ends up costing more in the long run because of all the problems that the lowest quality product generates. Shitty food for kids? More health care costs and ER visits. Less maintenance for grounds and machinery? More costs to replace less efficient materials. Large corporations from hundreds and thousands of miles away running your local support staff? Little-to-no investment in the community. But Dick Snyder knows all about outsourcing and the personal gain that results. Remember Gateway?
(SIX) Let's look at the concept of "compensation" for a minute. There are a lot of ways to consider compensation for one's efforts, from straight-up cash to a blend of cash now and cash for retirement later to a number of other iterations. Since I consider myself a professional (two Master's degrees and countless hours working to become better at my job), my compensation involves salary and benefits, because a worker that is in good health can work more efficiently with less time lost to illness. So because my profession chooses to negotiate for such compensation, I should scale back because my profession has less value? Less value in a time when the President has stressed the promotion of community colleges as a means of lifting America back to international contention through education? That's the hardest thing for me to swallow.
Actually, the most depressing thing is the awareness of the absolute lack of control that I and others in similar positions feel. That it doesn't matter how eloquently I draft these words, that it doesn't matter how many people read this and forward it to friends (perish the thought), that it doesn't matter how many tens of thousands of my fellow Michigan citizens will be negatively impacted by legislation like this. We're in full-on Bill Murray from Meatballs mode here: "it just doesn't matter." Once the toilet gets flushed, there's only one way to go, and that's down into the shit. I just wish it were otherwise.
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