Derrick Coleman, the superintendent of the River Rouge School District, is one of Michigan’s highest paid superintendents, even though his district is not considered to be a large one. River Rouge has 2,257 enrolled students.

According to the district’s website, Coleman’s salary went from $238,040 in 2017 to $258,521 in 2018, an 8.6% increase.

This made him the fifth-highest paid public school superintendent in the state in 2018.

Coleman did not appear in a list of the best-paid superintendents in a July 27 Michigan Capitol Confidential story, due to a discrepancy in official records. The school district’s website reports his salary at $258,521. But the Michigan Office of Retirement Services, which was the source of information in the story, shows Coleman earning a total salary of $172,600.

The state retirement office maintains individual pay data for purposes of calculating the pension and other post-retirement benefits owed to state and public school employees.

For any given employee, it’s very unusual for the retirement office to report a lower salary than the school district. This is because pensions are calculated by using not just an employee’s base salary; instead, the calculations include all the payments an employee receives, including extra pay for extra duties. For example, a teacher might be paid an extra $10,000 for coaching a high school sports team. That payment is included in the salary listed by the retirement office, but it does not necessarily appear in the salary figure released by the school district.

River Rouge School District, which sits on Detroit’s southern boundary, has three K-8 schools and one high school. In the latest Mackinac Center report card, its K-8 schools received grades of C, D and F, and the high school received an F.

To better compare the performance of different schools that enroll students with similar backgrounds, the Mackinac Center report card adjusts the average scores attained by each school to reflect the socioeconomic background of the students it serves.

Since Coleman took over as superintendent, the district's enrollment has increased from 1,232 in 2012-13 to the 2,257 students in the just completed school year.

Neither the River Rouge School District nor the Office of Retirement Services responded to an email seeking comment.

According to MIRS News, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is coy about the “Medicare For All” concept that’s become an issue in the Democratic presidential primary. Whitmer was questioned about her stance after she gave a speech at the Democratic presidential debates in Detroit last week.

MIRS reports that Whitmer declined to take a position, saying only, “I was really heartened by the debate on health care in particular.”

Back in 2013, there was no ambiguity about what state Sen. Gretchen Whitmer thought about another Democratic health care policy, which was signing the state up for the Obamacare Medicaid expansion. Whitmer joined all Senate Democrats (and eight Senate Republicans) in voting “yes” on the expansion, which made more people eligible for Medicaid and was expected to send approximately another $3 billion annually to hospitals in the state.

For the bill to go into effect immediately, it would need a two-thirds vote. It did not get that in the Senate. So, Medicaid expansion could not begin until three months after Michigan’s 2013 legislative session adjourned for good. At the time of the vote, that wasn’t expected to happen until mid-December.

On Oct. 1, 2013, Whitmer proposed a simple motion: Adjourn immediately. That way, the Medicaid expansion would go into effect on Jan. 1, 2014 rather than mid-March of that year. The vote to adjourn required a simple majority in both the House and Senate.

The votes weren’t there in either chamber, though. The motion lost in the Senate on a voice (unrecorded) vote, and the Medicaid expansion went into effect on March 14, 2014.