MEA VOICE At Issue
'The system is broken'
State's poor budget climate threatens services for students and jobs for Michiganders.
Despite pleas from custodians devoted
to their jobs—and to their students—the
Howell school board voted unanimously
to lay them off and hire a Grand Rapids
firm with a growing school clientele to do
the work instead.
As many of the custodians and their supporters filed out of the mid-August board meeting after the vote was taken, the superintendent said what many in Michigan are thinking:
“This is a miserable mess,” Superintendent Chuck Breiner said. “The system is broken.”
Howell is on a growing list of school districts making bad decisions that hurt students. For years, inadequate funding from the state has forced districts to cut programs and services to students or forced employees to accept low wages and fewer benefits. Schools are peopleintensive operations—and they should be—and that means that budget cuts harm kids as well as school employees who live and pay taxes in Michigan.
Students are learning in buildings with fewer supplies and teachers. They’re in classrooms that are often less clean and less safe than they once were. And they’re interacting with strangers because many of the for-profit companies now working in our public schools pay so little that employee turnover is a major problem.
School employees, especially educational support personnel, are treated as collateral damage in the funding shortfalls. There’s too little regard for the impact of layoffs on students: larger class sizes,unhealthy buildings, no transportation— or on communities: higher unemployment and a smaller tax base.
John Denzer, a teacher from Hartland who spoke at the meeting, said his district’s decision to outsource custodians hasn’t gone well. In an eight-month period during the 2006-07 school year after privatization occurred, the district logged nearly 130 complaints about quality of custodial service done by the same firm hired by Howell.
“We were promised all sorts of things that didn’t come through,” Denzer said.
Howell teacher Karen Langer said school employees shouldn’t be blamed for the current financial crisis: “Equitable funding is the answer, not privatization.”
Howell board member Jeannine Pratt said she worked with Lansing lawmakers for four years.
“I’ve been fighting for your jobs and this is extremely painful,” a teary Pratt told those attending the meeting.
“When will this stop?” one mother bluntly asked.