Layoffs loom: Dozens of teacher contracts in Detroit and Michigan are expiring
Are you an educator in Michigan? Let us know what’s happening in your school district by form at the end of this article.
Unprecedented cuts to public education are occurring across Michigan, largely due to the elimination of the state’s Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund (ESSER) program, which had provided $6 million in temporary assistance to Michigan’s struggling schools.
The Biden administration’s decision to let the COVID school funding program expire this September is expected to cost up to 5,100 teachers their jobs in Michigan and more than 380,000 nationwide. In addition, the drying up of ESSER funding is already leading to the destruction of many academic programs and services.
The first wave of cuts coincides with the June 30 expiration of collective bargaining agreements for teachers and other school employees in nearly 30 Michigan school districts. These include Eaton-Rapids, Utica Community Schools, Berkley, Wayne-Westland, Ferndale, Clarenceville, Plymouth-Canton, Northville, Garden City, Armada, Pontiac, Flushing, Southfield, Fowlerville, Kalkaska, Grosse Pointe and the Detroit Public School Community District (DPSCD).
In many Michigan districts, battles have begun against this fundamental attack on the right to public education. In Ann Arbor, educators, teachers and students staged militant protests for weeks, making impassioned statements to the school board about the urgency of defending teachers’ jobs and academic programs. Nevertheless, on May 20, the district—with the complicity of the Ann Arbor Education Association (AAEA)—approved the elimination of 141 positions, including 94 teachers. Rather than resist, AAEA officials offered to help “right-size” the district by recommending severance packages for educators.
After months of protests, teachers in Flint shut down the district with a one-day sick leave on March 13, forcing the district to partially back away from effective pay cuts. In Wayne-Westland, teachers are fighting cuts throughout 2023-24. The district has reported a $30 million budget deficit and is demanding $17 million in cuts for 2024-25. Teachers, parents and students in Grosse Pointe rallied for months last year protesting similar cuts.
Despite ESSER cuts in every district and contract expirations statewide, the Michigan Education Association (MEA) and the Detroit Federation of Teachers (DFT) have not lifted a finger to organize a joint fight to defend jobs. In fact, they are actively blocking the fight that is so desperately needed.
First, the union apparatus has built a wall of silence around the negotiations. On Facebook, a teacher from Wayne-Westland said, “Until negotiations are complete, everything is top secret.” A teacher from Flushing said, “I have no idea about any of the details.” “It’s like driving a car with square wheels,” a teacher from Fowlerville said of the bargaining.
Not only have Detroit teachers been completely shut out of negotiations, but they have been told at union meetings that their opinions are not sought. Last year, over 300 jobs were “proactively” cut before the ESSER budget cliff, exacerbating the problems facing teachers in America’s poorest big city. Yet the talks are taking place without any union commitment to restore jobs. This is no surprise, since the DFT bureaucracy has not only accepted the layoffs, but has also threatened to eliminate support positions. not The fact that many were in the AFT (compared to those who were) was considered a “victory.”
While Detroit teachers are kept in the dark about the talks, DFT President Lakia Wilson-Lumpkins was excited about Detroit Public Schools Community District (DPSCD) Superintendent Nikolai Vitti’s personal appearance at the negotiations. She congratulated herself on his invitation, telling local media, “And I can tell you, it worked. We were able to make some decisions that didn’t require ‘Oh, wait, let me think.'”
While these “decisions” are not communicated to union members, the bureaucracy has made it clear in several meetings with teachers that restoring the deduction for membership fees is its top priority. In other words, it is committed to safeguarding the lavish salaries of the union hierarchy.
This points to the union bureaucracy’s symbiotic and corrupt relationship with the Democratic Party, which is not concerned with defending teachers but with protecting the highly paid apparatus. Last year, Democrats overturned a state “right to work” law that allowed unions to negotiate the reinstatement of automatic payroll deductions for member dues.
With the number of teachers unions in the state declining for years, the MEA and AFT are focused all their efforts on increasing this source of revenue. The legislation pushed through by Democrats is a quid pro quo for the unions’ hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign contributions and their zealous support of Democrats at all levels. The union apparatus, meanwhile, turns a blind eye to the Democrats’ policy of undermining public education in bipartisan agreement with Republicans.
Three other wage issues being discussed, according to various sources, are the Detroit Public Schools Community District’s demand for a 10-minute extension of the workday without a raise, Vitti’s proposal to lure specialty educators with additional one-time bonuses, and the decision to arbitrarily deny a pay raise to teachers who were hired at the height of Covid deaths and are due a step-up (a 33 percent raise) this year with a base salary of $51,000.
These measures are reminiscent of the concession agreement the union agreed to last year, which left layoffs untouched, led to larger class sizes, greater teacher responsibilities and a shortage of school counselors, nurses and support staff.
When asked about the biggest concerns this contract year, an autism spectrum disorder teacher said: World Socialist Website that critical class size limits are not being met. One ESL (English as a Second Language) teacher pointed to overcrowded classes and said her class had grown by 10 students without any additional compensation.
Low wages after years of concessions are a key issue for most teachers. The DPSCD’s collective bargaining agreement reached last year, which was supposedly “generous,” failed to compensate teachers after decades of cuts and used a “divide and conquer” bonus strategy. Special education teachers received $15,000, while most educators received between $1,000 and $4,000 – all one-time taxable amounts that were not included in base pay or pensions.
These cuts are taking place while children are barely receiving an education and social spending is being cut in favor of war spending. Chalk strike“In spring 2023, 24.7% of students in Detroit were reading three levels below their grade level, while only 13.5% of students were reading at grade level.” Michigan ranks 41st in the U.S. for child education, according to the 2024 Kids Count report, which also examines a composite index of child well-being and ranks Michigan in the bottom fifth on most indicators.
The Department of Education and the Education Ministry’s obstruction of labor is designed to prevent potential strikes against the cuts, such as those that have previously broken out in Flint or West Virginia and across the country. The unions are working overtime to isolate districts, cover up the scale and scope of the attacks on education, and prevent strikes in the run-up to the U.S. presidential election on November 5.
The union apparatus is solely concerned with preventing embarrassment for the Democratic Party establishment, which has prioritized war over social spending. Biden has phased out the ESSER program, but still found over a trillion dollars for ever-expanding wars for global dominance.
As has become routine, the pro-capitalist AFT and NEA bureaucrats are imposing new – and even more existential – cuts to public education in order to keep their “seat at the table.” These millions of dollars cut from education and social services are being used to fuel the genocide in Gaza, the proxy war against Russia, and the military confrontation with China.
Jerry White, the Socialist Equality Party’s vice presidential candidate in the 2024 election, spoke to teachers fighting budget cuts at rallies in Wayne-Westland, Flint and Ann Arbor. In a statement to teachers in Ann Arbor, he emphasized:
Public education is no longer a priority—war funding is. Biden has phased out funding for the Emergency Aid for Elementary and Secondary Schools (ESSER) but has allocated nearly a trillion dollars for military spending this year. While big business politicians tell us there is no money for schools, Biden signed a bipartisan funding bill last month for another $95 billion that, among other things, provides for more weapons to Israel to slaughter Palestinians and to Ukraine for the US-NATO proxy war against Russia.
The cost of a single Lockheed Martin F-16 fighter jet is $63 million. That’s enough to cover Ann Arbor’s school deficit almost three times over! The truth is that America’s ruling class has nothing to offer young people but a future of war and death – and from their perspective, the less education the youth have, the better…
As the founder of scientific socialism, Karl Marx, said long ago, “Every class struggle is a political struggle.” If the interests of educators and the next generation are to prevail over the giant corporations that profit from imperialist wars, then the working class must use its immense social power to reorganize society on the basis of human need, not private profit interests.
Finally, I urge you to support SEP presidential candidate Joseph Kishore’s campaign and me and sign our petition to get us on the ballot in Michigan. I also urge you to contact the Michigan Educators Rank-and-File Committee, part of the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees, to join with workers across the state, the U.S., and around the world to defend the right to a quality public education for all.
Are you an educator in Michigan? Let us know what’s happening in your school district by filling out the form below.
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