While Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s MI Healthy Climate Plan says that Michigan needs to build the charging resources for 2 million electric vehicles by 2030, the transition of the state’s vehicle fleet to all-electric will take a decade longer.

With Executive Directive 2023-5, Whitmer has ordered that the state of Michigan convert its light-duty fleet to EVs by 2033, and its entire fleet, including medium and heavy-duty vehicles, by 2040. According to the 2022 State of Michigan Fleet Plan, the state fleet consisted of 8,758 on-road vehicles.

It will take 17 years to transition a fleet under 9,000 vehicles to all-electric.

In the directive, Whitmer admits the mandated switch to EVs is meant to boost demand.

“This will reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, boost demand for Michigan automakers’ ZEV [zero emission vehicle] production, and reduce the overall costs of the state fleet,” the directive reads.

Read it for yourself: Executive Directive 2023-5 

Not every vehicle would have to be electric; exceptions will be allowed. But “exceptions shall be disfavored” and made on a case-by-case basis.

As one paragraph reads, the state will:

Establish vehicle purchase exception criteria, and an exception review and approval process, by which agencies may seek exceptions for specific state fleet vehicles. Exceptions shall be disfavored and, when requesting an exception, the requesting agency shall consider alternate decarbonization strategies for reducing fleet emissions, including, but not limited to, biofuels and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles;

Every department of the state will be required to create a zero emissions plan within six months, outlining fleet replacement schedules. 

Lucy Calkins, the education professor whose work was disowned by Columbia Teachers College earlier this year, is set to appear as a keynote speaker at a Troy School District conference this weekend, called the Midwest Literacy Coaching Mini-Institute.

Some parents in the Southeast Michigan community say their school district needs to update its curriculum to embrace phonics, the reading method Calkins’ teaching program is widely accused of having downplayed.

Calkins estimated that one-fourth of the nation’s elementary schools use her approach, called “units of study,” according to a May 21, 2022, account in The New York Times. But her work has also faced criticism from those who favor the Science of Reading method, known as phonics. The newspaper said Calkins had made “a major retreat, adding that she has started to include phonics in her curriculum.

In September 2023, Columbia announced that the Teachers College would end its relationship with the project that has housed Calkins’ work. The New York Times summarized the change this way: “Amid Reading Wars, Teachers College Will Close a Star Professor’s Shop.”

The change could not come soon enough for Michele Maleszyk, a former teacher and parent of a first grader in the Troy district.

Maleszyk says she has asked officials to change their reading curriculum, but they have not. She said she emailed the news from Columbia to the district’s school board and Richard M. Machesky, superintendent of the school district. Those requests have gone unheeded.

“We do not choose curriculum based on individuals, university base, vendors, or other non-research-based factors,” Machesky wrote in response to the parent. “We rely upon many highly trained and well-educated individuals in our Teaching and Learning Department to help monitor student progress, provide professional learning and support for staff. These are the individuals that are also best suited to determine what is science-based research and what is not.”

Maleszyk and other parents have spent money on personal tutors to overcome the troubles their children have had in reading, which she blames on the curriculum.

“Critics of (Calkins’) ideas, including some cognitive scientists and instructional experts, said her curriculum bypassed decades of settled research, often referred to as the science of reading,” the Times reported on Sept. 8. “That body of research suggests that direct, carefully sequenced instruction in phonics, vocabulary-building and comprehension [are] more effective for young readers than Dr. Calkins’ looser approach.”

Students in the Troy district have not performed well under that approach.

More than 85% of third grade students scored proficient or higher on the state’s standardized reading test in the 2012-13 school year, before the district adopted its current reading curriculum in fall 2014. The comparable proficiency rate fell to 74% in 2018-19, according to MI School Data.

The percentage of third-grade students who were proficient or advanced in reading dropped again, to 69%, during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021-22. Last year, 66% were proficient or advanced in reading.

Despite the changes at Columbia, the Troy School District is scheduled to host Calkins as a keynote speaker at an upcoming conference. Calkins announced her appearance on her website. The event is scheduled from Sunday to Tuesday and will cost participants $360 for the three-day event.

The school district did not respond to an email seeking comment.