Teacher Retirement Push Nothing to Brag About

April 23, 2010

Next time you are out with a group of friends, ask each one to answer this question: “Who was the teacher who had the most influence on your life?”

You will be surprised on two fronts: everyone will have an answer and won’t sit there trying to figure out who it was. It will be on the tip of their tongues.

And chances are that instructor was a seasoned veteran with many years in the trenches.

Which brings us to the current contentious debate about the governor’s teacher retirement legislation designed to lure those with the most experience to kindly take a powder…NOW!

One recalls when Gov. Jennifer Granholm first plopped this into the hopper. She was grinning from ear to ear when she announced that when all those experienced teachers left the classroom, there would be thousands of younger teachers knocking down the doors to get in.

Wasn’t that grand, the governor seemed to imply.

Well maybe it’s not.

To date, the debate has focused on one thing: m-o-n-e-y. The governor wants to save $255 million to help reduce the deficit. A noble goal.

The Michigan Education is focused on money, too. On behalf of teachers, the union opposes the 3-percent contribution those teachers would be forced to make into the retirement system.

The MEA is using a document designed to scare the bejeezus out of teachers and entitled, “Concerned About What You’re Hearing Regarding Legislation Targeting Your Wallet? YOU SHOULD BE!!!”

The union, in no uncertain terms, suggests the gov’s plan will cost teachers between $146 and $300 per pay period, depending on one’s salary.

That’s a good chunk of change.

While there is plenty of back and forth about the bucks, there is precious little about the kids. Hello?

If you remove 30,000 or so seasoned teachers from the system and replace them with inexperienced instructors, do the kids lose?

Sen. Irma Clark-Coleman, a gutsy former Detroit school board member, thinks the answer is a resounding yes. She reports that two of the best principals in the battered Detroit school system would be forced out the door. Multiply that times hundreds of similar districts statewide. The senator wants them to stay put to help with the reform effort now underway.

As for younger teachers, Clark-Coleman tells it like it is: “These young teachers coming in, they’re wonderful and they’re full of energy, but you gotta know how to teach.”

Can you say, “Amen?”

It’s not that the younger teachers don’t have anything to offer; they do, but they would also benefit from having an experienced teacher in the room next door, just in case the new instructor concludes he or she doesn’t know everything just yet.

But if that instructor is at some retirement village in Florida, the badly needed help won’t be there and there is no 800 number to call to get it.

Bottom line: kids and new teachers both lose, and so does the state.

It’s not just about the money, and before this fight is resolved, hopefully some lawmakers will join the Detroit senator in debating the merits of losing all that experience. And there needs to be a healthy debate.

The Granholm scheme may help to eliminate one deficit but help to create another one. And that long-term drain is even more costly: namely, even more kids who won’t have an influential teacher to brag about when it comes up in dinner conversation.

Tim Skubick is Michigan’s Senior Capitol correspondent and has anchored the weekly public TV series “Off the Record” since 1972. He also covers the Capitol and politics for WLNS-TV6 in Lansing.

Tim Skubick Extra Extra… (A weekly bonus only for Dome readers)

So…Who Won?
You can count on it. Any time a political journalist covers a candidate debate, the first question out of the box is, of course, who won?

Fact of the matter is, it doesn’t matter how the reporter scores the thing; the real winners and losers are picked at home by the viewers, readers and listeners. And while that sounds like a cop out, it’s true.

If, for example, your forte is a fighter, scrapper, and somebody who is willing to take on an opponent, Attorney General Mike Cox was your winner, as he was the only one on the stage taking the fight to the others. It was a risky move but, being down in the polls, why not give it a shot?

Cox sparred at first with front-runner Congressman Pete Hoekstra over federal bailouts, but that paled in comparison to the two rounds he went with the Nerd, Rick Snyder.

Cox, who reminded the audience several times that he was a former Marine, once said it was a Marine’s job to protect nerds. He did no protecting in Wednesday night’s first TV debate with all five GOP candidates.

Sgt. Cox was not asked by the panel to discuss sending jobs to China, but he went there anyway as he accused business guy Snyder of questionable stock-trading practices and alleged outsourcing to foreign lands.

Snyder denied it, as he has done in the past, and after the debate he tried to turn the jab into a counter-punch as he dismissed Cox’s performance as a typical “career politician” doing what c.p.’s do, i.e. attack and distort. Cox handed that to him on a silver platter.

Therefore, if you favor the underdog when he is being whacked, Snyder turned out to be the winner.

Senator Tom George of Kalamazoo showed a little passion of his own as he characterized his opponents as a sheriff (Mike Bouchard), the business guy (Snyder), a congressman (Peter Hoekstra), and then “another attorney general,” referencing the fact that the current governor was an attorney general just like Cox.

It was a good line, but Bouchard managed to one-up George by noting that in the old days of John Wayne it was the sheriff who went in to clean things up.

For everybody under 30, they went “John who?”

As for Mr. Hoekstra, he did not bring his “A” game to the table.

The quintet will go at it again down the road.

Tic-Toc-Tic-Toc
The envelope please.

The winner in the Ticking Time Bomb category is: (Drum roll) Virg Bernero.

Even the Democratic candidate for governor concedes this is a potential problem as he tries to move across the street from Lansing City Hall to the office on the second floor of the state Capitol.

The candidate with the hot rhetoric has conceded that his greatest asset — and liability — is his mouth. Which is why some Democrats are worried that it is only a matter of time before that time bomb goes off, taking the Bernero candidacy along with it.

Think Howard Dean.

The former Democratic candidate for governor single-handedly deep-sixed his own effort with the “He-must-be-crazy” speech he gave the night he lost the Iowa presidential caucus. Surely, you remember the way he rattled off all those states he was going to win in the future with his voice screeching higher and higher with each one.

Mr. Bernero remembers.

In fact, he remembers it so much that in a closed-door skull session with 30 of his would-be supporters, he brought up the subject himself.

“I know there are those out there who believe I will have a Howard Dean moment,” he advised the group and then promised it would never happen.

Promise made but a long way to go to keep it.

Part of Bernero’s charm is that he sometimes opens his mouth before he engages his brain. It makes for great copy, but can sometimes be bad politics, as inevitability someone will be offended. The trick is to limit the number of “someones” who are offended.

But, Bernero says, this is me. He says he will be himself and will be honest with folks, and if some are put off, so be it.

He’s done it before and survived, but this time the stakes are even higher. Now any slip of the lip will not be confined to the confines of the capital city. With the media monitoring his every word, if the time bomb goes off now, the entire state will hear the ca-BOOM!

And Virg Dean…er…Bernero knows it.