By Lily Guiney
Gongwer
Funds from the state aimed at providing pay increases to teachers and other school staff have been doled out to districts, the Department of Education said this week, with wide flexibility granted by statutory language for districts to spend the money as they choose.
Section 27l of the 2024-25 budget supplemental allotted to school districts $203 million to “increase compensation for educators in the district or intermediate district,” without many parameters on what method schools should use to do so. MDE officials said the funds were sent out in the December state school aid payment and came out to $145.39 per pupil, using last year’s pupil count.
Education groups and superintendents said the vague nature of the statutory language surrounding the funding means barring guidance from MDE, districts will largely be allowed to determine the best way to administer the dollars to increase compensation themselves, alongside any unions representing their employees.
The statute does specify that the term “educator” as used in the section includes teachers, librarians, speech, occupational and physical therapists, school counselors and social workers, school psychologists and nurses, paraprofessionals, food service workers and custodians, bus drivers and literacy coaches. The funding may also be used to increase the compensation of “any other school employee covered under a collective bargaining agreement.”
Eastpointe Community Schools Superintendent Christina Gibson said her district will distribute the funding using a structure it’s employed to spread out state grants in previous years, which has been negotiated with the district’s unions. When Eastpointe received grants from the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund post-pandemic, the district distributed the money to provide bonuses to teachers who came back to teach in person.
“Eastpointe Community Schools is set to get $313,573 (from Section 27l) … we had built out some attendance incentives in previous school years, and we had used our ESSER funds to incentivize initially, teachers coming back to work because that was so challenging,” Gibson said. “Now what we’ve been doing is using an employee structure that we negotiate with our unions, and we’ve been doing it again. It’s tied to coming to work, and we’re actually going to be doing a payment here soon, a 2% bonus to all of our employees, and then with the funds that we have, we might be able to do another 2% bonus loaded with (Federal Insurance Contributions Act tax) in the spring.”
Gibson said sitting down with her union leadership to discuss a distribution method for these funds will be “easy bargaining.”
“This is a great time to sit at the table with your union president for your teacher’s union, you just start with that positive presupposition that we appreciate the teachers, we appreciate the work, and for us, it will be tied to a metric,” she said. “Our big thing for us as an organization is we want to equitably disperse those funds and to direct hires. I think people in the profession need to be recognized, and I think this is a great use of those funds.”
Michigan Alliance for Student Opportunity Executive Director Peter Spadafore and K-12 Alliance of Michigan Executive Director Robert McCann each said negotiations with collective bargaining units will determine how most districts spend the money from the state. Some may give direct bonuses across the board, while others may use incentive-based structures like Eastpointe plans to do.
Gongwer
Funds from the state aimed at providing pay increases to teachers and other school staff have been doled out to districts, the Department of Education said this week, with wide flexibility granted by statutory language for districts to spend the money as they choose.
Section 27l of the 2024-25 budget supplemental allotted to school districts $203 million to “increase compensation for educators in the district or intermediate district,” without many parameters on what method schools should use to do so. MDE officials said the funds were sent out in the December state school aid payment and came out to $145.39 per pupil, using last year’s pupil count.
Education groups and superintendents said the vague nature of the statutory language surrounding the funding means barring guidance from MDE, districts will largely be allowed to determine the best way to administer the dollars to increase compensation themselves, alongside any unions representing their employees.
The statute does specify that the term “educator” as used in the section includes teachers, librarians, speech, occupational and physical therapists, school counselors and social workers, school psychologists and nurses, paraprofessionals, food service workers and custodians, bus drivers and literacy coaches. The funding may also be used to increase the compensation of “any other school employee covered under a collective bargaining agreement.”
Eastpointe Community Schools Superintendent Christina Gibson said her district will distribute the funding using a structure it’s employed to spread out state grants in previous years, which has been negotiated with the district’s unions. When Eastpointe received grants from the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund post-pandemic, the district distributed the money to provide bonuses to teachers who came back to teach in person.
“Eastpointe Community Schools is set to get $313,573 (from Section 27l) … we had built out some attendance incentives in previous school years, and we had used our ESSER funds to incentivize initially, teachers coming back to work because that was so challenging,” Gibson said. “Now what we’ve been doing is using an employee structure that we negotiate with our unions, and we’ve been doing it again. It’s tied to coming to work, and we’re actually going to be doing a payment here soon, a 2% bonus to all of our employees, and then with the funds that we have, we might be able to do another 2% bonus loaded with (Federal Insurance Contributions Act tax) in the spring.”
Gibson said sitting down with her union leadership to discuss a distribution method for these funds will be “easy bargaining.”
“This is a great time to sit at the table with your union president for your teacher’s union, you just start with that positive presupposition that we appreciate the teachers, we appreciate the work, and for us, it will be tied to a metric,” she said. “Our big thing for us as an organization is we want to equitably disperse those funds and to direct hires. I think people in the profession need to be recognized, and I think this is a great use of those funds.”
Michigan Alliance for Student Opportunity Executive Director Peter Spadafore and K-12 Alliance of Michigan Executive Director Robert McCann each said negotiations with collective bargaining units will determine how most districts spend the money from the state. Some may give direct bonuses across the board, while others may use incentive-based structures like Eastpointe plans to do.
