School District May Violate State Law By Removing Teachers Based Strictly On Seniority
Concord Community Schools superintendent and board ignoring teacher effectiveness in layoffs
After failing to get its teachers’ evaluations done in time, one school district’s solution to simply lay off the least-experienced educators may be against the law.
MLive reported that Concord Community Schools Superintendent Terri Mileski and School Board President Brian Philson supported a proposal to lay off the “least senior staff members.” The move was being considered because teacher performance evaluations wouldn’t be completed until May.
“We need to be able to tell the staff what is going on as soon as possible,” Mileski said in the MLive article. “This would allow those who need to find new employment, to do so.”
In 2011, the Michigan Legislature passed collective bargaining reform laws that prohibited districts from laying off teachers based only on seniority rather than how well they do their jobs.
According to state law, school districts cannot use "length of service or tenure status" as "the primary or determining factor in personnel decision when conducting ... the elimination of a position."
Philson, Mileski and Trustee Randy Hicks did not return requests for comment.
Audrey Spalding, education policy director at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, said if Concord follows through with layoffs based strictly on seniority, it appears to be illegal.
Spalding said there are plenty of other districts that don’t follow the law when it comes to the 2011 reform laws.
“Sadly, this fits with what we’ve seen,” she said.
Spalding did an analysis earlier this year that found that 60 percent of the state’s 200 largest school districts didn’t remove prohibited contract language that was illegal under the 2011 laws.
Michigan Capitol Confidential is the news source produced by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. Michigan Capitol Confidential reports with a free-market news perspective.
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More State Favors for Detroit
Deferment through borrowing
The city of Detroit gets more revenue than every other Michigan city because of special treatment in state revenue sharing, casino taxes and utility taxes.
This extra money has not been enough to prevent its bankruptcy, nor were these the only favors extended to Detroit. The state also helped the city fight off insolvency by changing the rules for municipal borrowing.
Given this history, bailing out the city again to the tune of $350 million would be unfair to other Michigan residents and communities, and is unlikely to prevent future problems in Detroit governance.
All cities are creatures of state policy. The state determines how they operate, what they can do and what they have to do. These rules govern how cities can raise revenue and whether they can borrow money.
Among these rules is a law that allows for emergency borrowing through "fiscal stabilization bonds" that cover spending in excess of current revenue, and are secured by state revenue sharing payments. Note that this debt is not intended to finance long-lived infrastructure projects but simply to pay current bills while the underlying causes of the fiscal imbalance are fixed. Cities used to be limited to $125 million in borrowing with these bonds. The Legislature increased these limits in 2010 to allow Detroit to borrow up to $250 million. The city proceeded to borrow the maximum amounts.
The state’s review panel found that the city had been covering cash flow shortfalls with $610 million in borrowing. This allowed the city to pay its bills as they come due, but it also trades current solvency for future payments that drain the ability to provide services to residents. The city did not fix its basic problems and this further contributed to the debt that it is seeking to mitigate in bankruptcy.
In addition to providing extra revenue to the city, the state also helped it borrow more.
Bailing out the city is unfair to Michigan taxpayers. They have in effect already done so courtesy of greater revenue sharing and special state treatment. Despite this, Detroit slipped into bankruptcy. In other words, the state has already bailed out Detroit and should not do so again.
There is a better way: more aggressive use of asset sales — including part of its artistic holdings — contracting and ending unnecessary services.
Michigan Capitol Confidential is the news source produced by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. Michigan Capitol Confidential reports with a free-market news perspective.