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.
A Delta College Trustee told fellow board members Tuesday evening that the community college was not following a key transparency requirement in a federal privacy law, but his move to bring the institution into compliance was rebuffed.
The Bay City Times reports Trustee Kim Higgs was lead to the conclusion that the school was in violation of the Federal Educational Rights Protection Act. During the meeting he made a motion to create a new policy which would bring the school into compliance by making the following items available via Freedom of Information Act requests:
Student name
A photograph
Telephone number
Date and place of birth
Major field of student
Grade level
Enrollment status
Most recent educational agency or institution attended
Registration of student documents of student organizations of names and addresses of directors of officers and a statement and purpose of the organization
Right now the school already releases the name and telephone number of students. But the federal law mandates all the other information be made available. The law mandates that educational institutions create certain documents, some of them which are available to the public and some which are not.
And how serious is not being in compliance with this law?
“This is a statutory requirement that every secondary institution needs to comply with,” said Higgs. “The consequence is the loss of all federal funding. Congress had made this fit for stringent penalties.”
Fellow trustees however forced Higgs to withdraw his motion, and bring it back up at the board’s next meeting.
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