K-12 Alliance Calls on Senate to Take Action to Address Staff Shortages in Schools

HB 4752 Must Be Amended to Remove Arbitrary Salary Caps

LANSING, Mich., September 7, 2023— As schools across Michigan face unprecedented staffing challenges, the K-12 Alliance of Michigan has been calling on the legislature to rewrite Michigan’s current educator retirement law, one of the strictest in the nation, so that schools can bring back recently retired teachers and support staff without having to wait out the current 9-month period in which educators are barred from returning to classrooms. 

While the House introduced and passed legislation earlier this year, House Bill 4752, that would allow retirees to return to work sooner, it included an arbitrary $10,000/year salary cap on these employees, a figure that would almost certainly see educators decline opportunities to return to work in schools.

As HB 4752 is now up for consideration in the Senate Education Committee, the K-12 Alliance is calling on committee members to amend the bill to eliminate the salary cap before they pass it so that schools can have the flexibility to do what’s best for their students by having qualified teachers fill these currently vacant positions.

 "We appreciate the work that went into developing and passing HB 4752 through the House earlier this year, however, as long as it includes a salary cap, it simply won’t give our schools the ability to effectively recruit retired teachers, tutors, counselors and other support staff back to the classroom where they are desperately needed,” said Robert McCann, Executive Director of the K-12 Alliance of Michigan. “Schools reopened this year with unprecedented numbers of vacant positions and, while the state has begun to implement long-term incentives to recruit more young people into the teaching profession, there remains a short-term crisis that cannot be solved without allowing retired educators to return to the classroom.”

Under the current retirement law, a recently retired teacher could immediately go back to work in the private sector, another public sector job or even find a teaching job in another state without impacting their retirement. The only job they are barred from doing is the one they are most needed for inside of Michigan schools. 

Michigan has one of the strictest laws in the nation, leaving our schools at a competitive disadvantage compared to our neighboring states who are recruiting our recent retirees to come back to work there. Just south of our borders, Ohio allows all educators to return to the classroom after 60 days with no salary cap.

“Educators earn their retirement through decades of hard work inside of our schools,” McCann continued. “If and when they are willing to come back to the job to help address current staff shortages, we should be thanking them, not telling them their work is worth so little. If Michigan is putting salary caps on educators, whether $10,000, $20,000 or any figure that doesn’t pay them what they are worth, then we aren’t doing what’s necessary to ensure our students have the best possible support they need and deserve in our schools.”

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The K-12 Alliance of Michigan is a coalition of education leaders committed to fighting for strong K-12 schools across Michigan. Comprised of Superintendents from every district in Genesee, Macomb, Monroe, Oakland, St. Clair, and Wayne counties, they are collectively responsible for educating over half of Michigan’s students.