Profane, Insulting Math Teacher Flunks Math On School Funding

Rob Ritter, a math teacher at Walled Lake Northern High School, wrote a letter published on a union-promoted website called MEAmatters.com in which he tells a fellow educator to “Go to hell” and calls her “one incompetent moron.”

Ritter, who didn’t respond to emails seeking confirmation he was the author as the website identified him, accepted the invitation to respond to Lansing School District teacher Mary Davenport, who authored a widely distributed letter telling fellow Michigan Education Association members why she opted out of the union.

Ritter also claimed to be a conservative who no longer supports the Michigan Republican party “once the idiots running our state” started adopting Mackinac Center policies. Ritter says in his letter that the Legislature is “defunding our schools.”

ForTheRecord says: Ritter’s claim about defunding schools is not true. Since the GOP took control of the Legislature and the governor’s office, the state has given more money to K-12 education.

That’s especially true at Ritter’s own school district, Walled Lake Consolidated Schools.

According to the Michigan Department of Education, the state gave Walled Lake Consolidated Schools $101.2 million in 2010-11, when the district had an enrollment of 15,486. That was in then-Gov. Jennifer Granholm’s final budget.

In 2014-15, the district received $107.4 million from the state and had an enrollment of 14,807. In other words, Ritter’s district received $6.2 million more to educate 679 fewer students than it had in 2011.