Michigan 2024 budget includes $50M for teacher, admin mentoring

Over the next five years, Michigan will spend $50 million on mentoring new teachers, school counselors and administrators.

Michael Rice, state superintendent for Michigan, announced the plan in his 2024 letter to lawmakers. According to Rice, Michigan has patched up a weakness that causes teachers to flee the profession.

“We know that a leading cause of educator turnover at all levels is a relative lack of mentoring. For years, the only mandatory mentoring in the state was for new teachers, and it was unfunded at the state level,” Rice wrote. “There was no mandatory mentoring of new principals and new superintendents, and no mandatory training of new school board members.”

That will change this year, at least for new principals, who were added last year to the law requiring mentorship for new teachers.

Still left outside the law’s scope are new school superintendents, Rice noted.

“Mentoring of educators in new roles must be structured and strengthened so that educators are more likely to continue in the profession, to the benefit of children,” Rice wrote.

In addition to the $50 million, another $150,000 was budgeted to train new school board members.

Michigan still has no training requirement for new school board members, Rice wrote. He encouraged lawmakers to create one.

Later in the letter, Rice made the case for a homeschool registry in Michigan.

Read it for yourself: Superintendent Michael Rice’s 2024 letter to Michigan lawmakers