The Value of MEA
Southfield ESP staffers value efforts of MEA to save jobs
'Our situation was a prime example of the kind of support MEA provides every day for members.'
Southfield ESP member Jack Luther (left) congratulates Michael Graves after the Southfield Board of Education voted 5-0 to rehire Graves and four other support staff members.
Michael Graves said it best as one of the “Southfield Five,” school district support staff employees who were rehired after being fired in June when their names appeared on a list of convicted felons who work in Michigan public schools.
“This wouldn’t have had the positive ending it deserved without the work and overwhelming support of the MEA, its staff, leaders and members—our entire MEA family,” said Graves, president of the Michigan Educational Support Personnel Association of Southfield.
“Our situation was a prime example of the kind of support MEA provides every day for its members throughout the state.”
All five employees—three custodians, a bus driver and a paraprofessional—had exemplary work records with the district. And each had a felony conviction, had paid their debt to society and had turned their lives around.
In the case of Graves, 46, a custodian, he was charged in 1978 with a felony to solicit larceny from a person. He was 18 years old at the time and served a 90-day jail term.
UniServ director Pat Haynie
thanks the more than 1 0 people who attended a rally in support of the‘Southfield Five.’
“I was young, and I made a mistake,” said the longtime local, state and national MEA leader. “No one got hurt—I wasn’t armed—and I was just trying to get some money to buy food for my younger sisters and brothers.”
The Southfield school district fired the support staff members after being notified by the state in June that they were on a list of school employees with felony convictions. The Michigan Department of Education provided the list to the district, as required by a series of new state laws, known as the “Pupil Protection Laws.”
Those laws require the discharge of school employees who are convicted of sex offender crimes. None of the Southfield employees was charged or convicted of any sex crime. School employees convicted of other felonies may continue to work with permission of the local superintendent and school board.
The Southfield employees were rehired
in mid-July at a hearing before the superintendent
and school board, thanks in
large part to the efforts of MEA staff.
Graves praised the work of UniServ director Pat Haynie and MEA attorney Michael Lee at the hearing.
Haynie served as “the point person” for the Southfield employees in dealing with the district and organized a rally for the five employees prior to the school board hearing.
Lee, the MEA attorney who represented the employees at the hearings, said he wanted to present a fuller picture of each employee to the board. “We wanted to make the board understand the value to the district of keeping each employee, and to show that the district will be much better off retaining each of these exemplary employees.”
In the end, the board voted 5-0 to rehire each employee. The board’s decision brought cheers from the rally participants who waited in a parking lot outside the hearing building.
“We want to thank the board members for having the strength and will to reverse the earlier decision,” Graves said.