An ongoing feature of political debates that revolve around Michigan public education is individual teachers making claims that they have not received pay increases. Teachers unions often make similar claims. In most but not all cases, actual data from school districts and the state tell a different story.

Less common is school officials making such claims. But in Morenci Area Schools, a small school district in Lenawee County near the Ohio border, Superintendent Mike McAran said that school employees have not had a salary increase since the 2005-06 school year.

A review of Morenci teacher salaries shows they have been stagnant since 2013-14, the first year Michigan Capitol Confidential started tracking teacher pay. According to the district’s union contract, teachers agreed to an 8 percent wage reduction in 2014-15.

A math teacher who started teaching at Morenci in 2009-10 made $43,383 in 2013-14 and was paid $43,247 in 2017-18. The pay of one special education teacher dropped from $65,801 in 2013-14 to $64,789 in 2017-18. Teacher salaries can vary year to year due to bonuses and supplemental income for additional duties. For example, both teachers cited above made between $1,500 to $3,400 extra a year for coaching school athletic teams.

A review of the district’s situation explains why teachers haven’t seen pay increases.

Enrollment Fell.

The school district suffered a significant decline in enrollment. The number of students dropped from 872 in 2007-08 to 662 in 2017-18, a 24 percent decline over that 10-year period. Enrollment declines cost the district $7,631 per pupil in state funding, which follows each student from district to district.

Staff reductions did not keep up with enrollment declines.

The amount of staff downsizing at Morenci is far short of what enrollment declines suggest was needed. The school district employed 97.79 full-time equivalent employees in 2007-08 and 92.28 FTEs in 2017-18. That was a 6 percent reduction over the 10-year period.

Moreover, the number of district administrators has actually risen, from 5.50 FTEs in 2007-08 to 7.50 in 2017-18. The teaching staff, however, went from 49.50 FTEs in 2007-08 to 46.90 FTEs in 2017-18.

The district also had more paraprofessionals (classroom assistants) in 2017-18 (7.81 FTEs) than it did in 2007-08 (7.41 FTEs).

Payments to the Pension System Increased.

Even though Morenci saw a slight reduction in employees, the cost of the pension contributions it must make to the state-run school retirement system has skyrocketed. The district contributed $651,965 to the underfunded Michigan Public School Employees Retirement System in 2009. By 2018 this had increased to $970,000, an increase of $318,035. If the pension costs had just remained the same over that nine-year period, each teacher within the district could have received a $6,766 bonus in 2018.

Per-Pupil Funding Increased.

Morenci’s per-pupil funding rose from $7,078 in 2007-08 to $8,359 per pupil in 2017-18. After adjusting for inflation, that come to $208 more per pupil.

In an email, McAran said some of the extra money the district receives is restricted and must be spent on certain costs. For example, the state gives the district extra money to pay the costs of MPSERS. That money just flows through the district and is returned to the state for those pension costs.

The unionization rate of teachers at public charter schools across the country, including Michigan, has remained relatively flat for most of the last decade, according to a report published by a national charter advocacy organization.

The number of unionized charter schools across the nation grew substantially between 2009-10 and 2016-17, going from 604 to 781. But the total number of charters also climbed, resulting in a slightly lower overall rate of unionization (11.3 percent, down from 12.3 percent in 2009-10). In Michigan, where charter schools are known as public school academies, unionization has not taken hold. In 2016-17, only seven schools out of 294 were unionized.

The numbers were compiled from surveys of state education departments and state and local education organizations by the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, which included them in a report released earlier this year.

The report cited a close relationship between state-level labor law and unions’s successes in organizing charters.

Some states virtually require union representation of charter school employees by, for example, making charter teachers subject to the same collective bargaining agreement that covers the local, traditional public school. Others, however, prohibit collective bargaining for charters altogether. As a result, there are five states where charters are 100 percent unionized and 20 others in which no charters have unionized employees, the report said.

About 7,000 public charter schools, employing 219,000 teachers, operate in 42 states and the District of Columbia, the report said.

Democratic Party candidates in Michigan have campaigned on closing charter schools in the past. Democratic members of the Legislature have, over the years, introduced various bills that would have limited or eliminated charter schools altogether.

Unions – fueled by dues paid by union members – have overwhelmingly donated to liberal or Democratic causes, according to OpenSecrets.org. For example, the National Education Association made $142.7 million in political donations from 1990 to 2018, with 97.2 percent going to “liberal or Democratic” causes. The American Federation of Teachers made $123.0 million in political donations during that same time period, of which 99.5 percent went to liberal or Democratic causes.

The growing charter school movement that generally doesn’t unionize its members threatens the Democratic Party that has the overwhelming financial support of teacher unions.

Michigan charter school teachers have the same collective bargaining rights as other public school employees. But details of the state public sector labor law, and the manner in which most charters are organized, have limited efforts to organize charter employees by the state’s two main teachers unions, the MEA and AFT. Even in the labor-friendly precincts of Detroit, teachers at only two of 43 charters were represented by unions in 2016-17, the report found.

MEA and AFT officials have suggested that the low number of unionized charters stems from opposition by charter management companies.

“Often times employers violate the protected rights of staff by retaliating against them for trying to speak up about working conditions in their schools,” Nate Walker, an organizer and policy analyst for AFT Michigan, told Capital News Service this year.

Union officials have also said high turnover rates among charter school staff hinder organizing efforts.

Buddy Moorehouse, with the Michigan Association of Public School Academies, said the real explanation is more nuanced. Teachers unions have lobbied heavily to extend to charter schools the law that mandates conventional public school districts to engage in collective bargaining with unions. They have, to date, been unsuccessful.

“But it’s up to the teachers to decide, and by and large they have decided they’re better off without (a union),” he said.

By contrast, the workforce in nearly all of Michigan’s conventional public school districts are represented by unions. Representatives of the MEA and AFT Michigan did not respond to requests for comment on the National Alliance report or the current state of union organizing efforts at Michigan charter schools.