The Oakland Press reported last week that Gov. Rick Snyder’s proposals regarding school funding would cut $11 million from Rochester Community Schools in 2011-12, citing district figures presented to the board of education.

However, the $11 million in “cuts” included – among other things – a loss of $4.6 million in federal dollars, the loss of $250,000 in rent from a church, and a reduction of $394,000 from a forecasted loss of 63 students. None of these will be caused by the governor’s plan.

And Rochester Community Schools also appears to have misrepresented a claim that it has cut $28 million since 2001-02. Budget documents on its own website show its general fund expenditures have grown from $110.6 million in 2001-02 to $158.8 million in 2010-11. That data comes from the Michigan Department of Education and the district’s web site.

The list of alleged “cuts” include revenue gains in areas such as pay-to-play fees for athletics,  increasing the ticket prices at sporting events and gaining $97,300 by enrolling 26 non-resident students.

“Using this definition of a cut, the only way a school district would avoid cutting their budget would be to never reduce the cost of anything ever,” said Michael Van Beek, the education policy director at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. “By representing their fiscal situations in this way, public schools give the impression that their chief purposes are to provide jobs and just spend as much money as possible. Their purpose is to provide educational services, and they should be constantly striving to do that as efficiently and effectively as possible.”

Superintendent David Pruneau didn’t return emails seeking comment. The district said he was sick Thursday and Friday. District Spokeswoman Debbi Hartman said Friday that it was possible the $28 million in cuts mistakenly included revenue gains and would check into it. But Hartman didn’t respond later Friday.

In the Oakland Press article, Pruneau laments facing a $16 million budget shortfall.

“Under any circumstances, for us to come now and face a $16 million shortfall in one year is unprecedented,” said Pruneau. “We have pruned and carefully positioned ourselves so that we were in this position to actually have a fund equity in this point in time.”

However, the district approved a new contract with its teachers in December 2010 that allowed for significant raises. This happened even though school districts throughout Michigan have been on notice about the impending funding problems at the state level.

According to the new contract, a teacher that started with a bachelor’s degree in 2009-10 with a $38,074 salary would get a 9.9 percent raise to a salary of $41,872 in 2010-11 and is due a 7.1 percent raise in 2011-12 that would increase the salary to $44,881.

The new contract used as an example how a teacher with a master’s degree would go from $65,772 in salary from 2010-11 to $71,273 in 2011-12, an 8.3 percent increase.

Rochester teachers contributed $346 per year for health care premiums in 2011 and $377 per year in 2012. That family plan comes with a $200 annual deductible. The school’s web site lists the 2010 cost for a teacher’s health care benefits, including dental and life insurance, to be $21,666. That would mean the annual contributions for premiums by teachers would be about 1.5 percent of the district’s total cost.

By comparison, the average private sector employee with an employer-provided health care option pays 21 percent of the employer’s cost.

A local Michigan Education Association representative recently claimed that first-year teachers in the Lansing School District are paid below the poverty line. That could theoretically be true for a teacher just starting his or her career … with a family of eight to support.

A first-year teacher with a bachelor’s degree in the Lansing School District earned $35,741 in 2009-10. The Michigan Department of Human Services does not calculate poverty levels for Michigan. The Census Bureau  set the poverty level for a family of one at $11,351 in 2010. For a family of two, it was $14,512. It can get as high as $38,388 for a family of eight.  

The poverty comparison was made by Ric Hogerheide, an MEA UniServ Director.

"There are current teachers working full time, first year teachers, that are below the poverty line in Lansing," Hogerheide said.

Hogerheide didn’t return an e-mail seeking comment.

What Hogerheide didn’t mention was how quickly a starting teacher’s salary can increase via “salary steps” which are across-the-board increases that teachers usually get for the first 10 years or more of their career.

For example, a teacher that started in 2006-07 in the Lansing School District with a bachelor’s degree earned $34,521, according to union contracts. That salary would increase 5-percent to $36,261 in 2007-08, then jump 8.8 percent to $39,475 in 2008-09, increase another 6.8 percent to $42,174 in 2009-10 and jump 6.4 percent to $44,900 in 2010-11.

“The MEA claims that schools need to pay for extremely expensive health benefits to attract good teachers, yet at the same time the union perpetuates the myth of the poverty-stricken teacher,” wrote Michael Van Beek, the Mackinac Center for Public Policy’s education policy director, in an e-mail. “How does this help attract high performers to the profession?”

Michigan school districts have regularly paid some of the nation’s highest teacher salaries.