I am writing today to announce the closure of the Michigan Messenger. After four years of operation in Michigan, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news into a single site, The American Independent at Americanindependent.com. This is part of a shift in strategy, towards new forms [...]
An abstinence-only presentation provided to numerous school districts in Calhoun and Eaton Counties in October of this year provided false and misleading information to students about HIV, experts allege.
Two county registers of deeds filed a class action lawsuit Monday on behalf of Michigan’s 83 counties alleging that the Mortgage Electronic Registration Services owes millions of dollars in property title transfer taxes.
Despite evidence of the impact of mercury on children and public health, Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette last month joined with 24 other state attorneys general in filing a lawsuit to scuttle new EPA regulations that would reduce mercury emissions from power plants.
The fallout from the failure of the state legislature to provide adequate funding for schools continues. Several local school districts are now considering adding furlough days to the remainder of the school year, the Lansing State Journal reports:
At least two local school districts — DeWitt and East Lansing — have mentioned the possibility out loud as they look for ways to make midyear budget cuts because of $292 per pupil or more in state funding losses.
And legislation introduced in the House last week would authorize the state superintendent of public instruction to cut pay and benefits for employees of school districts that are in crisis.
“We could ask everybody across the board to take a wage concession, a furlough day or pay back the district,” said DeWitt Superintendent Tina Templin. DeWitt has calculated an unpaid day off would save the district about $103,000.
“That’s a difficult pill to swallow but these are difficult times,” Templin said. DeWitt is looking at cutting more than $800,000 from its $23.8 million budget this year.
In East Lansing, Superintendent David Chapin put unpaid days off Jan. 4 and April 1 on a long list of possible budget cuts the district could make to trim $2 million from its $33 million budget.
By law, schools in the state are required to have 1,098 hours of instructional time for all students in a given school year. Some schools schedule extra time in order to make up for snow days and the like, so they could potentially cut a day or two here and there to save some money and still comply with the law.
Schools that don’t have extra days on the schedule would have to expand the length of the remaining days to make up for the lost hours in order to comply with the law. But either way, this would be a major inconvenience for families that have set schedules for daycare and work for the parents. To make that change in the middle of a school year would be a real burden for many families.
And that’s not to mention the difficulties it could cause for teachers, asking them to shoulder the financial burden for education.
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