LANSING – As Governor Jennifer Granholm signed legislation Monday designed to make the state eligible for as much as $400 million in federal grants, state union officials were urging caution to their local districts being asked to agree to related reforms.
The legislation was a part of the application for federal “Race to the Top” funds, but so too are memoranda of understanding from local school districts agreeing to participate in state school reform efforts.
To be valid, the memoranda must be signed by the district superintendent and approved by both the school board and the local union. Superintendent of Public Instruction Mike Flanagan set Thursday as the deadline for submitting memoranda to be included as part of the state’s application.
Districts that decide against agreeing to a memorandum of understanding can avoid departmental reforms, but cannot avoid the bills signed into law Monday by Granholm setting up measures for dealing with failing schools, charter school expansion and teacher certification.
Flanagan had already rejected a call from the state’s two teacher unions, the Michigan Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers-Michigan, to push back that deadline to give officials more time to submit the MOUs. On Monday, the unions moved that request up to Granholm and State Board of Education President Kathleen Straus (D-Detroit).
“Without an extension that allows them to receive and review the final state plan, signing an incomplete memorandum of understanding (MOU) is just like signing a blank contract,” said MEA President Iris Salters. “It’s not unreasonable to ask that districts and their employees get to see what they’re agreeing to before they sign it, especially since there are so many legitimate concerns about the contents of the draft plan.”
“It is frustrating and disappointing to see our state superintendent try to rush through this opportunity,” said AFT-Michigan President David Hecker. “We urge the governor and the state school board to extend the deadline for districts and local unions to sign the application until a final application proposal has been completed. And we call on Superintendent Flanagan to make significant changes to the state plan to truly reflect what our Legislature intended.”
The unions said in a joint letter that Department of Education should post a final “Race to the Top” plan and they should be given time to review it.
But Flanagan said at a press conference marking the signing of the reform legislation that extending any of the state’s deadlines for submitting information needed for the application could mean missing the deadline to submit the state’s “Race to the Top” application. The application is due January 19, and he said it needed to be sent January 15 to ensure it reaches federal officials by that date.
The Thursday deadline is for submitting MOUs to intermediate school districts, which must then forward them to the department.
And Flanagan said the draft plan posted by the department on December 22 should resolve many of the concerns districts and unions had raised about not signing on to a plan they had not read.
MEA spokesperson Doug Pratt said the department should post a final, not a draft, plan before asking anyone to sign on to follow it.
“If you’re going to enforce a January 7 deadline, you’re going to have lots of districts not sign on because they don’t know what they’re signing,” Pratt said. “This is about the education of children. This isn’t something you take a leap of faith over.”
Louise Somalski with the AFT-Michigan said the timing of the latest revision to the plan also caused issues. “Everybody was going into shutdown mode for a couple of weeks and they were being asked to hurry up and sign something,” she said.
Pratt said publishing a final plan and then giving districts another week to look at it would still have the MOUs to the state a day before Flanagan wants to submit the application and would allow the districts time to alleviate their concerns.
Don Wotruba with the Michigan Association of School Boards said his group had not urged against signing the MOU, but had urged waiting until the last possible moment to give the approval in case there were changes to the state plan.
“What we told local boards and superintendents was they should have a board meeting so they can discuss it and understand what they’re committing to,” he said.
And he said the primary concern for districts is agreeing to something that will cost them money they do not have.
Wotruba said a recent clarification from Flanagan that would allow districts to back out even after grant awards have been made should alleviate those concerns. But he said the school groups would have to work to hold Flanagan to that commitment.
The Michigan Association of Public School Academies, in a newsletter sent Monday, urged its members to sign the MOU to be eligible for some of the funding.
“MAPSA has reviewed all of the R2T bills which passed a few weeks ago, and we believe there will be no features in the state’s education reform plan that are inconsistent with the interests of our members schools, and therefore we strongly recommend that all charter schools sign the MOU,” the group said.
The unions still have some issues with the plan. “The draft plan far exceeds the scope of recent legislation passed to support Michigan’s Race to the Top application and appears to be nothing less than a quest for additional power by the superintendent of public instruction,” the letter from the unions said.
In particular, the unions object to the proposal for a three-tiered teacher certification process that they argued was not in the legislation signed Monday and that the department has not finished studying.
The plan also calls for the department to develop the formula for measuring student growth in mathematics and language arts, a decision the unions said is given to the local districts under the school reform legislation.
But not signing the MOUs not only means the individual district would not be eligible to share in any federal grant money received, but also could put the state at risk of losing out on the funds, Flanagan said.
The proportion of districts signing on to participate in the state’s reform plan is essentially a tie-breaker for otherwise equal reform plans, Flanagan said, but he expected that tie-breaker would be used, especially in the first round of applications.
“A lot of states are going to get points on the pieces of legislation,” he said.
Flanagan also appeared Monday to downplay the state’s shot at getting any funding in the first round of “Race to the Top” grants, suggesting that at most two states would be awarded anything in that first round.
The application was important, he said, for the state to get feedback and be more competitive in the second round.
SCHOOL REFORMS: And Flanagan joined legislators in arguing that the education reforms adopted as part of the effort to win the grants should have been adopted anyway.
The bills (HB 4787 , PA 204; HB 4788 , PA 201; HB 5596 , PA 202; SB 926 , PA 203; SB 981 , PA 205) were hailed at the signing ceremony as the most sweeping reforms in more than a decade, but various parties also indicated the work was not yet done.
The legislation makes changes that members of both political parties have been trying to enact for years, including allowing the state to take the reins of under-performing schools, making room for more charter schools, tying teacher’s jobs to student achievement and increasing the dropout age to 18.
“The reason why this legislation is so significant is now everything will be focused on the child learning,” Granholm said. “It will not be focused on the inputs; it will be focused on the outcomes.”
Sen. Wayne Kuipers (R-Holland), chair of the Senate Education Commit
