In the 2011-12 budget year, advocates for more spending on higher education were upset that then-Gov. Rick Snyder reduced state funding to Michigan's 30 community colleges. At the time, the state was still recovering from the previous decade's one-state recession and the nation’s Great Recession.

In that year, total funding for Michigan’s community colleges fell to $283.9 million, a $12 million reduction from 2010-11.

Since then, community college spending has increased every year. In the 2020-21 fiscal year, appropriations to Michigan community colleges set a record at $438.4 million. After adjusting for inflation, this is equivalent to $110.8 million more than the 2011-12 level.

In the current (2021-22) fiscal year, $431.4 million has been appropriated for Michigan’s community colleges. The data comes from the Senate Fiscal Agency.

Paula Herbart is president of the Michigan Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union. She has weighed in on the tense local school board meetings that have been in the news when parents challenge the separate issues of face mask policies, and race-based curriculums.

“Public shaming, intimidation and bullying have no place in our society, especially when talking about dedicated educators and volunteer school board members committed to student success,” Herbart stated in an essay published by The Detroit News.

The MEA, however, itself used public shaming, intimidation and bullying when it went after its former union members who made choice to stop paying dues and quit the union when Michigan’s enacted a right-to-work law in 2012. The law makes it unlawful for employers to require workers to pay union dues as a condition of employment.

Public shaming: When union members opted out of belonging and paying dues to the union, many MEA affiliates posted their names on lists in lunch rooms, teacher lounges and in online newsletters.

Intimidation: When union employees opted out and stopped paying dues after right-to-work took effect, the MEA sought to ruin their credit by reporting nonpayment of (no longer mandated) dues to credit bureaus. The union also paid collection agencies to use bill collector practices on former union members who had opted out of paying the union, as authorized by the law, and therefore owed no union dues.

In another instance, a local union president interrupted the class of a teacher while delivering a letter stating she hadn’t paid dues, which she has no obligation to pay. Some union members were also sued for non-payment of dues by the MEA despite the right-to-work law.

Bullying: Former MEA President Steve Cook used name calling when he repeatedly referred to former union members who opted-out as “freeloaders” in media interviews. Other local MEA unions followed suit.