Governor Gretchen Whitmer has signed a law intended to ease temporary teacher shortages.
The law allows retired teachers to take a temporary school job six months after retiring, without forfeiting some of their pensions and other retirement benefits.
Teachers could also choose to fill such a temporary position sooner than six months after their retirement, but, to avoid losing their benefits, they would be limited to earning a total salary of $15,100 in the calendar year.
Thomas Morgan is the spokesperson for the Michigan Education Association, the state's largest teachers' union. He said it's a small but positive step to address the state's serious teacher shortage. But Morgan said in the long run, the state needs to make teaching a more attractive job.
"We need to make sure that we are as a state paying educators a good wage, listening to their voices, and making sure that we are treating teachers and school support professionals with the respect and dignity they deserve," he said.
Morgan said the perception of the value of public education in general, and teachers in particular, has been degraded by decades of right-wing criticism, but there are signs that parents and other supporters of public education are now organizing to fight back.
