Tenure reform: Union says it's open to streamlining process for firing educators
Published: Sunday, November 21, 2010, 7:02 AM
Scroll down for poll: Do you feel reforms to teacher tenure law are needed?KALAMAZOO — After Timothy Grider was arrested for picking up a prostitute in 2009, Byron Center Public Schools suspended the special-education teacher.
They also searched his classroom and found a half-empty bottle of vodka — a violation of school policy.
Grider didn’t get fired. Instead, the 19-year veteran teacher agreed to resign for a year’s salary and benefits, a settlement worth $106,307.
Public school teachers in Michigan and throughout the country are covered by tenure, a set of legal protections that makes their dismissal for incompetence or malfeasance a complicated and expensive process.
As a result, tenured teachers are rarely fired. Michigan has more than 100,000 public school