Bill lets retirees teach, get pension due to lack of subs
Lansing — Michigan lawmakers are under pressure to let retired teachers return to the classroom because of a shortage of substitutes and not enough full-time teachers in special education, pre-kindergarten and certain subjects.
A 2012 law allowing teachers who retired after mid-2010 to teach again without losing their pension expired more than 15 months ago. That left provisions of a 2010 teacher retirement incentive law on the books.
Pension and health care benefits must be suspended once retirees directly employed by a school district are paid more than one-third of their average final compensation in a year. Retirement benefits are off limits entirely for retirees hired by an independent contractor to perform a school’s “core services.”
Reasons for the substitute teaching shortage are varied, including an improved unemployment rate that has meant job seekers who might have taken a part-time job substitute teaching landed full-time positions in education or another field. But school administrators and the companies they contract with for substitutes say legislators also are at fault.
“The Legislature disallowed retirees to come back who were deemed our best substitutes,” said Clark Galloway, president of EDUStaff, which finds substitutes for more than 300 of the state’s 541 districts. The firm, which recruits, screens, hires, trains, places and pays substitutes, is doing everything “within reason” to search for candidates, he said.
That includes job fairs, highway billboard advertising, yard signs and placements with newspapers, radio stations and on music streaming service Pandora.
One in 10 Michigan classrooms has a substitute teacher on average, more on Mondays and Fridays. A 95 percent fill rate was considered good up until a few years ago. The current fill rate is 85 percent, Galloway said, which means “we now have 1,500 classrooms on a daily basis that are not getting a substitute teacher or districts are scrambling.”
Rep. Holly Hughes, R-Montague, who sponsored the 2012 legislation allowing for exemptions, is spearheading a bill to re-enact the expired provisions. She said retired teachers were snared in lawmakers’ crackdown on superintendents making six figures who “double dipped” by retiring, collecting a pension and being rehired by an outside Bill lets retirees teach, get pension due to lack of subs: