In an apparent effort to make it even more difficult or even stop school employees from exercising their right under right-to-work to not pay union dues or fees, the state’s largest teachers union has quietly set up an obscure post office box address to which members must send the required opt-out paperwork. It's P.O. Box 51 East Lansing, MI 48826.

Based on a letter the Michigan Education Association sent to members who had tried to get out, and discussions with some of them, resignation requests sent to the regular union headquarters address will not be honored.

An extensive search of the union's websites found references to the post office box address on just one page of MEA's main website, and on one affiliate union’s website. There is no record of this post office box address existing before this month. In the past, union members who wanted to opt out just had to send notification to the address of the MEA's headquarters in East Lansing.

The Michigan Education Association didn’t respond to an email seeking comment.

The MEA only allows school employees to opt out of paying dues or fees during the month of August, a practice that a Michigan judge has ruled is illegal. Actual enforcement of the judge's ruling requires action by the Michigan Employment Relations Commission, which has indicated it will comply.

Under the Michigan right-to-work law that took effect in 2013, employees in a unionized workplace must notify the union in writing that they do not wish to pay dues or fees. The obscure post office box appears to be a new barrier to exit, on top of the (apparently illegal) one-month opt-out hurdle. Despite the obstacles, the MEA lost over 5,000 members last year.

The Mackinac Center for Public Policy obtained a letter the MEA sent to school employees who mailed their opt-out notices to the union's regular address, which denied the application because the member did not follow the "proper procedure." One school employee who wanted to opt out confirmed to the Mackinac Center that the MEA said the opt-out request would not be honored unless it was sent to the mystery post office box.

“Perhaps the stampede of school employees wanting to leave makes the union feel a need to set up a whole new separate post office box just to handle the volume,” said Derk Wilcox, an attorney with the Mackinac Center Legal Foundation. “But the MEA isn't allowed to toy with school employees by playing a shell game with resignations. The Mackinac Center Legal Foundation is prepared to demonstrate this in court — yet again — to ensure that teachers are not blocked from exercising their rights under the law.”

MEA members who wish to find out more about union membership, or who wish to opt out, can do so easily at the website https://michiganunionoptout.com.

The August edition of the Ann Arbor Observer periodical weighed in on the contract dispute between the Ann Arbor school district and its teachers. It wrote that the school board was “asserting the union’s contract has to change to reflect new state laws and seemingly permanent funding cuts. ...”

Except, state revenue to the Ann Arbor school district increased a combined $23.5 million over the last four state budgets compared to the 2010-11 school year. Of that amount, $3.7 million would have been for educating a cumulative total of 408 extra students over those four years. The rest was from increases approved by the Legislature, some of it earmarked for things such as special education.

The Ann Arbor Observer is not the first media outlet to inaccurately report that school districts have experienced funding reductions, a myth perpetuated in 2014 by Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mark Schauer and eventually debunked by the mainstream media.

The Ann Arbor school district hasn’t experienced the full benefits of the extra state funding because much of the new money was used to pay for school employee retirement benefits. The district’s contributions to the Michigan Public School Employees' Retirement System rose from $17.6 million in 2012 to $25.7 million in 2014, a 46 percent increase in two years.

School board member Christine Stead said the increasing burden of funding pensions is an important factor in why district officials feel like funding has been cut even though revenues actually rose.

Stead used the state’s foundation allowance grants for her comparisons, which in general account for 85 percent of a school district’s state funding. The payments to MPSERS as well as special education dollars are not included in the foundation allowance.

Stead said, “If the foundation allowance for the AAPS had merely kept pace with inflation since Proposal A was enacted (in 1994), we would have had $58 million more in revenue last year alone.” The Ann Arbor district’s total state revenue last year was $98.6 million.

"The burden of MPSERS and other costs (health care, inflation, etc.) affect all local school districts," Stead continued. "While the state allocation in overall school-related expenses has gone up, what has effectively gone down is what we are able to contribute to our classroom settings. This is where there is an increasing gap in our funding reality."

Stead says that understanding the district’s funding situation requires looking at how the rising pension burden erodes current funding.

Stead has done what many other school leaders have not, which is to support solving the problem of underfunded pensions by shifting new school employees to 401(k)-style retirement accounts, which by their nature, cannot be underfunded year after year.

(Click here to see Stead’s full email response.)