Detroit Free Press

Buyouts attract teachers

Free Press Education Writer

In Grosse Pointe, 102 of 527 teachers, four administrators and five on-instructional supervisors are taking buyouts that will pay them a year’s salary over the next 10 years. For top teachers, that will mean an extra $60,000 or more on top their pensions. The district expects to save $18 million in the process. About half the teachers taking buyouts statewide are between 38 and 55; the rest are older, said Tim Bell, vice president of Educators Preferred. Buyouts work best in districts where 50 percent to 80 percent of the staff is at the top of the salary scale and there are few laid-off teachers with first rehiring rights, Bell said. "Cost containment in salaries is critical these days," he said. "If you aren’t competitive financially, you cannot be competitive educationally.

Ed Shine, superintendent of the 7,900-student Grosse Pointe Public Schools, looks on the buyouts as a way to "help re-energize the district and save a lot of money, too." Like Ford, some teachers are just worn out and plan to take it easy for a while. Others are moving on to new careers or tending to family obligations.

Already more than 5,000 job seekers have sent resumes and filled out applications for Grosse Pointe’s openings. Mickey Montagne Shield, whose son is a second-grade in the district, said she is worried that the district won’t rebound easily from the loss of experienced teachers and that the cost savings will be fleeting. "It seems like a floodgate has been opened. I have to wonder what’s wrong here, why so many are getting out," she said. "What happens in another 10 years when the new teachers are at the top of the scale? The real problem here is, "are we being as efficient as we can be with our tax dollars, or are we looking for quick fixes?" In many cases, the losses will be painful. Experienced teachers may be expensive, but their skills aren’t easily replaced. "We are losing hundreds of years of experience," said Julius Maddox, president of the 127,000-member Michigan Education Association.

Not only do experienced teachers bring wisdom and savvy to their own teaching, but they help novice teachers "avoid the pitfalls of the profession and pass on ideas young teachers wouldn’t discover on their own for five or six years," Maddox said. Bob Button, 54, widely known and highly regarded journalism teacher at years, is taking a buyout to work for the Virginia High School League Inc., which coordinates extracurricular activities. "When I came here, I replaced a legend," Button said. "Just like we were all young and energetic once, we’ll be replaced by others who are young and energetic."

More than 5,000 newly certified teachers in Michigan are eagerly awaiting the latest round of departures. "This is what I was meant to do, and I just know I’ll do a bang-up job if somebody just gives me my own classroom," said Patricia Griffin, 42, of Livonia, a recent Eastern Michigan University graduate who was runner-up for Michigan Student Teacher of the Year.

Patrick Scheetz, director of Career Development and Placement Services at Michigan State University, said the buyout surge may sound good to job seekers but it hasn’t yet translated into an increased number of job offers for graduates. "I haven’t seen any sign that this means they’re filling those positions with young graduates," Scheetz said. That could change over the summer. A dearth of teaching jobs in Michigan since the mid-1970’s has sent thousands of new teachers out of state searching for work. Slightly more than half of the newly certified teachers have gotten jobs in Michigan for about the last decade --- down from the late 1960s and early 1970s, when in-state jobs were more plentiful.

"It would be nice to see things open up a bit and our graduates be able to find something closer to home," Scheetz said.