Free Republic

A leaked memo revealed how the state’s largest teachers union planned to get around Michigan’s new right-to-work law soon after it was enacted. The law repeals the power previously enjoyed by the union to get a school employee fired for not paying it dues or fees. In the memo from December 2012, Michigan Education Association President Steve Cook laid out the union’s strategy: “We will use any legal means at our disposal to collect the dues owed under signed membership forms from any members who withhold dues prior to terminating their membership in August for the following fiscal year. Same...

The Michigan Education Association, the state's largest teachers union, routinely submits financial reports to the federal government, as it is legally required to do. But the reports can leave outsiders wondering about the source of the roughly 30 percent of its income that is categorized under the heading of “All Other Receipts.” That’s the only description the Michigan Education Association provides to account for more than $30 million of its annual income. Specifically, on its 2014 LM-2 disclosure form, the MEA reported over $38 million in receipts from unspecified sources under the "All Other Receipts” heading. “This is something that...

In 2012, teachers in the Roscommon area school district became the first in decades to "decertify" the Michigan Education Association — fire it — and start their own independent union. Now, three years later, the president of the startup local, called the Roscommon Teachers Association, said 64 of 65 eligible teachers have voluntarily paid dues as of the recently completed school year. It probably didn't hurt that the union's $500 dues are about half the amount charged by the MEA, the state's largest teachers union. “Roscommon teachers show that voluntary unionism can thrive if the union is proving its worth...

The Michigan Education Association is directing people to a website that insults and vilifies a 37-year member who authored a widely distributed letter explaining why she wants to leave the state’s largest teachers union. Lansing School District teacher Mary Davenport wrote a letter that was sent to thousands of teachers to alert them that if they want to quit the union it would only allow them to do so in the month of August. Many teachers have complained about this so-called August window. Since Davenport’s letter was distributed, the website MEAMatters.com has invited union members to respond online. The website...

After being compelled to pay thousands of dollars in union dues over 37 years as a teacher, Mary Davenport thought the least it could do was create a harmonious workplace. Davenport says she got the opposite, which has taken a toll personally and professionally. The veteran teacher still has five years before retirement, and says she just wants to survive it. “I believe the union and management work together to target certain employees for dismissal, and that has been the case with me,” said Davenport. Davenport claims she is being cited for vague and trivial offenses, like using her computer...

The Saginaw Public School district has been operating with a deficit since the 2010-11 school year, and the proposed sale of a shuttered school building could erase the red ink, according to the Michigan Department of Education. Rather than sell the building to an interested party— a charter school — the Saginaw school board originally elected to demolish it. However, after months of effort, the board had a change of heart and approved the deal. On Thursday, the Saginaw district board accepted a $3.5 million offer from the Francis Reh Academy to purchase the Phoenix Science and Technology Center, which...

The Michigan Education Association has dropped an unfair labor practices complaint against Grand Rapids Community College, and also dropped its request for suspension of an election to “decertify” a union local which represents college secretaries. The decertification vote was authorized when one-third of the nearly 100 members of the Grand Rapids Community College Education Support Professionals signed a petition requesting it. The MEA filed its complaint and request a few weeks later. Supporters of the election say time was of the essence because the local bargaining unit’s contract expires June 30 and contract negotiations are set to begin April 1....

NODAWAY COUNTY, Mo. – A homeschooling family has filed a federal civil rights lawsuit after they say their home was illegally searched by the sheriff’s department. The Home School Legal Defense Association is aiding Laura and Jason Hagan. Their house was raided by Nodaway County Sheriff Darren White and Chief Sheriff’s Deputy David Glidden.

The Mackinac Center Legal Foundation announced today that Brighton Area Schools and the local union “have removed illegal language from a contract in response to a lawsuit filed on behalf of a Brighton High School teacher who said the union and district were violating his freedoms under Michigan’s right-to-work law.” The union president for the Brighton Education Association blasted the lawsuit when it was filed last week. "It would behoove Mr. Neuman and the Mackinac Center to check their facts before filing and publicizing this lawsuit that is 100 percent untrue," Ellen Lafferty told the Livingston Daily Press & Argus....

Apparently, some teacher’s union officials have taken too much public school math. michigan outline “On a Saturday in May, members of the Michigan Education Association held a walk in Midland bringing attention to public school funding,” the Michigan-based Mackinac Center reports in the organization’s July/August report. “They claim education funding is down nearly $19 million in the greater Midland area in the last four years.” “MEA president Steve Cook has claimed that Michigan’s public school budget has been cut by $1 billion. The problem is that these claims are not true.” “State spending on public education actually increased $800 million...

A retired school teacher with 30-plus years of service says he has to choose between food or medicine due to a law repealing tax exemptions for some pensions. But James Pearson, a 66-year-old retired teacher from Milford High School with 33 years of service, is likely collecting enough compensation from a pension and Social Security alone to put him above the average state income. He is also eligible for both Medicare and the state’s retiree health insurance, which should pay for most of the costs for medicine. Pearson has become the face of protesters complaining about the pension tax, being...

A Coopersville kindergarten teacher who resigned from the Michigan Education Association under the state's worker freedom law says she is glad her ordeal is over, but is concerned for her colleagues, according to a story in The Grand Rapids Press. "I am very thankful that the MEA has finally recognized my right to opt out, but my settlement doesn't bring justice to the thousands of other teachers in my position in West Michigan and across the state of Michigan," Miriam Chanski, who along with Petoskey teacher Ray Arthur is now free from the MEA, told The Press. "This is not...

Democrats and many in the media routinely complain about money spent in politics, and they regularly lash out at conservatives and big business. Turns out, unions are the top spenders in politics. Twelve of the top 20 political donors from 1989 to 2014 have been unions, which overwhelmingly support Democratic causes, according to an analysis done by OpenSecrets.org's Center for Responsive Politics. Seven of the top 10 donors overall give almost exclusively to politicians or groups on the left. ActBlue, a political action committee that raises money for Democrats and progressive causes and features Michigan Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mark Schauer...

Less than six months after the Michigan Education Association boasted of how it retained 99 percent of its membership after the state's right-to-work law went into effect, a union executive testified under oath that about 8,000 members have not filled out paperwork to have dues automatically taken from their paycheck. Eight thousand people not paying dues is a far greater number than the 1,500 the union claimed were not paying because they exercised their rights and opted out of the union. In testimony before the Michigan Employment Relations Commission, MEA Executive Director Gretchen Dziadosz said some teachers had not been...

Unions are finding sneaky ways to exact dues — but workers are fighting back. Two Michigan teachers will finally be allowed to end their union membership in the Michigan Education Association and will be refunded any dues they paid during this school year, according to a settlement agreement signed this week. William “Ray” Arthur, a teacher and wrestling coach at Petoskey Senior High School, and Miriam Chanski, a Coopersville kindergarten teacher, tried to quit the teachers’ union after Michigan adopted legislation to become the 24th right-to-work state in the U.S. Both Arthur and Chanski wrote letters informing the MEA that...

A Michigan Education Association union in the Upper Peninsula has listed the names of the school employees who left the union as part of the state's right-to-work law, leaving some to question whether the MEA is trying to create a hostile workplace environment. The MEA 17-B/C union newsletter listed the name of 16 employees from four school districts in the U.P. who decided against paying dues or fees to the union and it also listed the services they no longer will get now that they're not part of the union. Kathi Moreau, a counselor at Stephenson Area Public Schools, left...

Please watch the 4 minute 43 second video titled GLENN BECK,SICK Teachers in MI stand behind a colleague convicted of rapeING A BOY. Below is a transcript of the interview ( from www.glennbeck.com: GLENN: John, how are you, sir? JOHN: I’m doing great. Thank you, Mr. Beck. GLENN: I’m sorry that we have to meet under these conditions. I would imagine the conversation we had for the last couple of days had to be — your son has — did you guys know at all? Did you have any idea at all that this was going on? JOHN: No....

This is a story that SCREAMS for attention. In Michigan a family has been, and continues to be, brutalized by a systemic rot within the school system. A rot that perpetrates, and unbelievably as it sounds, excuses CHILD RAPE – despite the community outrage. This just came onto our radar screen. However, a cursory review shows this storyline has a similar disposition to the Penn State, Sandusky scandal. The Janczewski’s son was brutally raped over a period exceeding three years (2006-2009) by his middle school math teacher, Neal Erickson. Years later, in 2012, an anonymous tipster alerted authorities to video...

In the Wayne-Westland Community Schools, high school math teachers are the lowest paid as a group and make on average almost $25,000 less a year than the physical education teachers. The high school science teachers make $11,000 less than the district’s gym teachers on average. The salaries are set by a six-year teacher’s contract Wayne-Westland agreed to in 2008 and runs through 2014. The salary schedule determines pay solely by years of experience and education background. On average, physical education teachers were the highest paid group and made $78,675 a year. Teacher gross salaries can also include pay for extracurricular...

If taxpayers want to curb pension costs with a ballot measure, do they need an OK from unions before they start collecting signatures? San Diego’s Municipal Employees Association seems to think so. The MEA, which represents 6,000 workers on the city payroll, wants government unions to have a gatekeeper role in the initiative process — a right to advance review of certain ballot proposals that would affect employee benefits. Disturbingly, the courts have declined, so far, to set the union straight.
 
 Triggering the controversy is Proposition B, the pension-reform plan that San Diego voters overwhelmingly approved on June 5....