Welcome back.

Schools open before Labor Day and the head of the Michigan Association of School Boards, Don Wotruba, has some comments on same.

Our lead story, the governor with a new agenda coming out next week.

A sneak peek coming up here on the yacht.

Our panel, Kyle Melinn, Alyssa Burr and Simon Schuster sit in with us as we get the inside out.

Off the record.

Production of Off the Record is made possible in part by Martin Waymire, a full service strategic communications agency partnering with clients through public relations, digital marketing and public policy engagement.

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And now this edition of Off the Record with Tim Skubick.

Thank you very much.

Welcome back to Off the Record.

After an interesting night in our town last night, everybody safe and sound.

Goodness gracious.

Anyway, let's let's talk about Kyle, the governor next week is going to set forth an agenda.

This is what's next and an original title.

The "what's next?"

the address.

The governor and the Democratic controlled legislature got a lot done in the first half of 2023 here.

So she's looking ahead and hoping for an aggressive agenda in the fall that starts with renewable, reliable energy, which is something that's on the top of mind of everybody.

And particularly this weekend with all the power outages again.

And she really wants to touch on that and urging the legislature to take a look at ways that we can improve reliability while keeping electricity as affordable as possible, while keeping an eye toward renewables and trying to get to a carbon free.

Is a tough needle to thread.

It is.

How do you clean up the system and keep rates reasonable?

And I think that that's something she's going to try and keep as vague as possible because she doesn't want to get nailed down on something so particular like what the the Senate has proposed, which is going 100% carbon free by the year 2030, which would make rates go up quite a bit under that current proposal.

So I think she wants to keep things kind of vague at this point, but she also wants to talk about family leave, lowering prescription drug prices.

Those are two items that she's been very passionate about in the past with an eye toward the family.

It seems to be what she's looking.

At, what do you all make of that?

Well, it'll be interesting seeing how Democrats come back in the second half of the year, considering that they spent a good portion of the first part of the year repealing a lot of the GOP Snyder era policies.

So now they kind of have their chance to really sink their teeth into what they want to make of their majority.

You know, I think that, you know, when you look at the first half of the year, this was sort of a lot of, as Alison said, hitting undo on this sort of Snyder of policies and obviously some of this policy agenda seeing more of that, especially in relation to abortion and some of these energy standards.

But, you know, at the same time, I think the Democrats have something to prove in that they want to show that they can maintain their momentum.

But one of the things that really stands out in my mind is that with this kind of broad, ambitious policy agenda, are we going to have a February 27 presidential primary or not?

Well, this is the fly in the ointment here.

This is an aggressive agenda, but there may not be much to this term of going to January.

They may not have that much time to do any of this.

Well, they don't really have that much time.

They have September and they have a.

Lot to put this in the state of the state.

Well, because she wants to keep momentum going.

You know, she did.

She and the Democrats really get a lot of public and political pop by being aggressive on women's reproductive health in form of abortion.

And so she would like to roll back a lot of those regulations that were put in place when the Republicans were in charge.

That made it more difficult for people who provide abortions to provide that service.

So she wants to work with them to get this done and just keep the ball rolling.

That's what she's thinking.

But you guys are exactly right that she's got a clock ticking because she's got some immediate effect issues as far as some of the bills that they passed, the first half won't take effect until they adjourn for the year.

And so that's why late October right now is, I think, kind of what they're eyeballing to try and get everything done by.

All right.

Let's take a look at the eve issue from from 30,000 feet.

It looks to me like the Democrats have a political problem by endorsing electric vehicles.

How come?

Well, I would say that EV is, of course, the next phase of kind of this auto transition.

Michigan is a leader in the automotive industry, and they need to keep pace with what the rest of the country is doing and also set the tone for what Michigan strategy is going to be in that field.

But considering that there's these two very controversial projects in Michigan right now that got a lot of backlash from residents in the Marshall area, big rapids there, there's been a lot of fervor about how that is going to affect them next campaign season as far as what they're actually bringing to constituents.

Can't you foresee a Republican commercial that says the governor is EV policies are taking jobs away from UAW workers?

Is that is that are they putting that back together?

Sure.

But I mean, we're entering the 2024 election cycle.

You know, we're already in it.

And when you look at like this particular issue, it's so potent for Republicans because this is everything that Joe Biden has staked his first term on.

It's the revitalization and on shoring of domestic manufacturing.

It's confronting climate change.

It's modernizing U.S. infrastructure.

And so if they can't make this goal happen, this is something.

And if they fall short here, this is something that can be very much a referendum on Joe Biden if they can't get EVs to become a viable alternative.

If you had the head of the UAW telling the White House, you got a problem, they've got a problem, don't they?

Yeah, I would.

You would think so.

But I think that's why the UAW is trying to focus on the strike talks and trying to stick up for workers to try and get the conversation away from EVs at that top level, because.

It's not going away.

Well, listen, you're exactly right, because Republicans, this is their best issue.

They can't win on abortion.

They can't win on guns.

This is this is it.

You can use the China bashing, which the Democrats used successfully against Dick Dick Davos and now use it against them, because China is right there at the front when it comes to EV and electric batteries.

And meanwhile, I'm sorry, electric vehicles.

And meanwhile, you've got people who, you know, they're driving their Ford F-150 and they're like, hey, you know, I like my gas powered vehicle, works just fine.

I mean, I don't want to charge up my car and take me a half an hour or, you know, I'm at a station.

You know, it's hard for folks to wrap around the change when the current policies and using gasoline seems to work just fine.

If you sit down with a UAW member and say, we're trying to save the environment long term, what is the response?

That person will say.

Well, I don't even know if the issue is environmental.

I think UAW workers mainly just want to be involved in the conversation.

They want to know that they have job security going into this EV transition, especially because so much of the production is coming out of China.

They want to make sure that they have the jobs ability they can, you know, care for their families in the future and that the things that they're working for with this contract negotiation are cemented for future workers as well.

Yeah, I mean, this is a process of manufacturing that is so much more highly automated and different than what we've seen from ICE vehicles that if the Big Three can't find a way to implement this EV transition in a way that honors the sort of labor tradition that we have in the United States, it's going to run afoul of this, you know, on shoring goal that Biden and Gretchen Whitmer have.

Yes, but the autos are looking that the automakers are looking.

This is a salary opportunity they can save.

They can fatten their bottom line by getting rid of workers.

Well, that's that's a way to look at it as well.

But the whole industry has gotten automated and it's not just EVs.

I mean, it's just everything.

And, you know, I think that may be something that the UAW workers are bringing to the table when as we're approaching this this deadline on the strikes and making sure that they're still relevant, that their members have something to contribute as it comes to the production of whatever the new vehicles.

Are, it will be interesting to see how the governor handles it so she tiptoe around it.

I think that she's all in already.

I don't think that she can necessarily walk back something, especially when the leader of her party is so publicly in favor of this and she has been.

Asked could clam up.

To simply stop talking.

About it concisely.

Okay.

Unless some snotty reporter asked her about it and she's not going to go out there say, God, we've got a problem here.

We want these vehicles, but it could cost jobs.

Well, you got to sell it.

I mean, you can keep selling it.

And I think that's what she's going to do that this is the future.

If you want to have jobs in the future, electric vehicles, as hard as it may be to fathom right now is the future.

That's where we're moving.

We're we're not moving toward gas.

We're moving toward something where you plug it in your vehicle.

And maybe we're going to get to a point where it only takes a couple of minutes to charge your vehicle as opposed to 20 minutes or a half an hour.

And I think that's the message that she's got.

Assistant Governor, with all due respect, somebody might say to her, you know what, if I can't feed my family, the future is irrelevant.

Well, I think this is.

Part of the struggle right now.

Is that because we're just getting into this sort of EV era, that there isn't the used inventory available that like what you have with icy vehicles, you know, if you're really poor, you can buy a 2003 vehicle with 185,000 miles on it for three grand.

We're not there yet with EVs.

Well, let's turn the page and look at this budget.

This this story just refuses to go away.

A report from the citizens Research Council at the 11th hour secretly.

Is that the correct word?

I think that's fair term.

All right.

Secretly, they put in $1.8 billion in pork that nobody knew about until it showed up in the budget bill.

What did you make of that?

I think that it's interesting hearing Democrats talk about transparency and how they're going to do things different from Republicans, but it's kind of just more of the same.

I mean, I will say that the quote unquote 11th hour spending may not necessarily be anything new.

I mean, Republicans, you look in past budgets, it was the same thing.

But Democrats have just been kind of touting that they're going to do things differently and it's going to be more transparency.

But I think more of the problem is looking at the way that the state handles the budget process more than whatever particular party is in charge at that time.

You know, I think that this also there's an element of just desserts here.

I'm like we did our own analysis on earmarks that's going to be forthcoming.

We saw 1.6 billion in earmarks, almost 350 that we counted individually.

And when you remap those as well, and when you look at them, almost 90% of them, the vast, vast majority are located somewhere where a Democrat, either in the House or the Senate, controls that district geographically.

Yeah.

And when you talk to these legislators, they say that, you know, our population centers have been neglected for a long time and we need to be investing in them in the way that Republican districts were invested in.

Refresh my memory, didn't the chair of the House Appropriations Committee said there would be no late additions to the budget?

Yeah, if.

If that was said, I don't remember it, but I would say that that's not bad.

And I hear that incorrectly.

Guys, I she may have said that, but it's totally inaccurate because there was so much spending.

We counted $2 billion when we went through and we dug through we went through every single line item of every single department.

But you know, it's it's a greasing of the wheels that we saw when Republicans were in charge should get the budget passed with as many bipartisan support people as possible.

So we didn't have these elongated debates on the minutia of the budget and these lawmakers like it because these communities who want the fire engine or the parks improvement or whatever other goodies they want in there, don't have to go through this elongated grant process through a State Department.

They can just call their lawmakers and lawmakers just shove it in the budget.

And since we got so much money.

Well, I mean, that's money being spent all over the place.

It's it's a secretive process that has been caused by the large amount of money that we have in the budget that we're not used to.

And it's it's it's a process that the reporters here are going to keep digging on because we didn't have it.

There was no airing of it.

So now we're airing it now.

Well, the other interesting twist to this question is that the chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee said that for the first time, we will put names to this pork which everybody in town said, Yeah.

Oh, by the way, we won't give you the names until September of 2024.

Explain that, huh?

I think that if.

We know the names, put them out.

Now, when you look at the Citizens Research Council analysis, they showed how many of these were 11th hour.

I think there's also an element of this where the legislative leaders themselves have to figure out how all of these got into the budget.

All right.

Let's call in Don Wotruba and talk about schools.

Alright so Mr. Wotruba basically we have a teacher shortage here in Michigan, correct?

Teacher and administrator, and parapro.

How bad is it?

It's really bad.

We can't we're seeing notes going home to schools.

They can't find bus drivers.

We have classrooms that they don't have enough kids.

And I just received an email from a superintendent yesterday saying they lost a teacher last week.

They're starting school next week and they are probably going to have to do a sub all year long.

So is it time to let people without a teaching degree teach?

No.

That becomes pretty extreme.

In your head.

Your eyes went up in your head.

Well, I think that gets talked about.

But ultimately, I don't think any parent wants to send their kids to school and find out that somebody that doesn't have any credentials is teaching their child.

So we have to figure out a way to get more people interested in being teachers again.

So recently, Whitmer, Governor Whitmer signed some legislation that's supposed to empower teacher unions.

As far as what can be brought to the bargaining table, what subjects are included.

Those are things that in the Democrats mind are some things that can help this teacher shortage out.

How do you see it?

I have a hard time believing that most 18 year olds that are leaving for college and say they want to be a teacher are really even understand what labor agreements they're going to be negotiating under when they're now 22 years old getting a teaching job.

And do I think that some changes were needed?

Did we swing the pendulum too far in 2010 and 2012?

Maybe a little bit.

But I also don't think there was really that many things within the Labor changes that are going to bring about new teachers entering the field.

I mean, what about retaining the some of the old teachers?

That's a good point.

I think there is some piece of that that will happen with these changes and the balance that we're in have to figure out what are some of the changes going to be kind of detrimental to managing a school district and making sure that we have the right teachers with the kids that need the assistance?

That's going to be the struggle and that is going to be a bargaining issue now.

I want to talk about this teacher shortage.

Tim brought up, because we're seeing shortages in law enforcement, in hospitals and in health care.

Why do you think that is?

Why is everybody struggling to find good help?

You know, I think we've seen a decline, particularly during COVID and after in the number of people going on to college.

And so we're going to have less degreed individuals.

We saw that when Amazon was looking at Michigan.

We don't have the talent workforce here.

And so I think it's a shift of what people want to do is a part of it.

And frankly, education has been disrespected in the policy world for a couple of decades, at least.

And it makes it hard to ask kids to go in.

And most teachers now tell their children, this may not be the career for you disrespected.

How how are our teachers being disrespected?

I think education in general through the last 20 years with policies that tend to want teachers to do more reporting, more teaching to a test, not using their creativity to engage kids, I think that makes it hard for people to say, Yeah, that's what I want to do.

I need to create widgets in school and bring them out the other side.

That's not what teachers going to it for.

I think a common thread between all of these professions that I just mentioned is that they've become increasingly politicized throughout the pandemic era, especially in regards to, you know, curriculums and even school boards themselves.

Is there something more that boards can be doing to sort of run interference so that educators can sort of not be chased away from the profession?

That's a good question.

I think right now we see from most of our boards there's great support for their teaching staff, their administrative staff.

I don't know what else they could do.

And I think right now we see boards of themselves are recovering from the protests and packed board meetings that happened during COVID about masks and not masks.

And they're just coming out of it their own kind of trauma as board members.

And so I think there is going to be efforts to try to figure out.

And we see school districts offering incentives for new hires, longevity incentives to stay, you know, five years, that sort of thing, particularly in our urban centers.

So boards are trying to incent through monetary means if they can.

That is where the COVID dollars have helped districts a little bit to be able to try to work with that.

If some school board's been infiltrated, quote unquote, by ultraconservative Trump folks who want to take over the boards.

You know, we have an election now about eight months ago and we had new board members elected.

The sad thing is, I've never like to talk about whether a board member is a Republican or Democrat.

We've never known that's never been an issue on boards.

And now, by their own admission, is becoming an issue.

And I really hope that we in Michigan don't go down that road.

Well, how many new people like that have come on boards?

We don't we don't track the politics of individual board members.

We know that in each election cycle, we end up with about 700 new board members.

This past year was no different.

But whether they are conservative or liberal or independent, we have no idea.

I think that no, it's an interesting one because, you know, there's the truism, right?

All politics is local.

But the trauma that you're talking about, boards of experience over the past couple of years is increasingly about a national political agenda.

Is there something boards can do or something you'd recommend to bring them back to that local focus?

My hope is when people get elected to boards on whatever agenda is left, right, individual teacher, coaches, whatever they decide to run for the board that they're upset with that when they get on the board, they realize that that issue is going to take up about 2% of their time as a board member.

And the rest of the time, they're going to be making policies and trying to lead a district and govern that district.

And I think for a lot of them that ran on agendas, they're going to board and they're going to say, this isn't what I signed up for.

I didn't want to approve Chuck Registers and just make sure that the building are functioning.

And I think for some of them, they're going to be on it for six years and be like, this isn't a political place where they get to jump to the next level.

Yeah.

So this is something where people are going to get worn out over time on something.

And sadly, in some ways I hope that that is the case, that we don't become a state where people run on political agendas and they use school board to be the next stepping stone.

Well, there's another option to be a board bringing in more troops.

Yeah.

I mean, that is going to be you know, I've talked to individuals in this last cycle that I would say more from the progressive side that, you know, said, oh, we missed the boat on this last election.

We're going to try to make sure that we don't have that happen again.

And in many ways, that's my my greatest fear.

I don't want to see an arms war between the political parties about who gets to run for school board.

That's not who typically has served on school boards.

Well, and I wanted to ask, you know, something that I've been thinking about education related, especially in the last few days, when recently there was a report from the Health Department, State Health Department, about low vaccination rates with kids.

And I don't know if it's too premature to ask, but being that kids are returning to school, is there a world where, you know, these students could possibly end up masked or even back at home with virtual schooling?

I don't I don't I haven't heard anything like that.

I do think there is growing concern in the education community about the lower number of vaccinations.

We had a measles outbreak in Ohio last year where there were kids hospitalized.

And the lower that our vaccination rates get, that risk is going to be real for kids in the school.

And some of them have their own underlying medical conditions.

And school people are where are worried like what's going to happen if this continues in this downward trend, even though we're talking, you know, one or 2% right now and reduction, that's a lot of kids.

What's your biggest fear if school boards become more political?

I think they quit in many ways.

Thinking about the kids.

I think of school boards is very different than the legislature.

They are not a representative body.

They're a governing body.

It's seven people coming together to make a decision that's in the best interests of the district.

And for years, every board member had their own politics.

It almost never got to the board table.

And now when you start wearing it that way, you know, they're going to start taking on issues that are, you know, do we even start at the bargaining table talking about reproductive rights?

Do we start at the bargaining table or somewhere else talking?

And we've seen it on books and book bans.

At that point, there is some there's some tie to kids on the book side of things, but I just don't know where the arguments will go.

And I think that's risky.

And the test force come back now after COVID.

They had the last round of them show some recovery.

But there are a lot of kids that were impacted, impacted negatively by COVID.

And it's going to take a while to get back to where we were even pre-COVID.

You have also lost some kids who have disappeared into the ether, right?

That's what the numbers show at the beginning of last year.

We're just getting into that this year.

We don't know what the New numbers are.

Hopefully we'll see a larger return again.

But yeah, when we combine charter schools, private schools and public schools, there are definitely some kids unaccounted for after.

School, not some kids.

It was in the thousands.

Yes, you're absolutely correct.

I mean, I say some kids out of the 1.4 million.

But I mean, any number of kids gone, I'm not in school at all is a problem.

Truancy a problem?

I think it has been a problem historically.

I think that schools have had so many other bigger issues, trying to find teachers, trying to keep track of kids that I don't know that the truancy focus has been as high as it was pre-COVID.

What is the legislature not focusing on that you think they should?

You know, I actually.

Right now, can't they focus on the teacher and administrator shortage with scholarship incentives and other things?

While we might disagree on some of the labor type things, like they're making an effort to focus on the on the educator shortage, which I think is probably right now.

The one thing I'm hearing the most about.

And and they've also, you know, because of both state tax revenues and federal money coming in, they've done a good job of not only appropriating money, but putting it to the kids that are in LA and have the greatest need.

So in many ways, I think that that's the legislature has done pretty well over the last even couple of years.

You may disagree with this, but in terms of the educator shortage, I don't know if we're seeing the light at the end of the tunnel here.

What do you envision happening if things get worse?

I don't think we're seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.

I mean, even if we increase the number of people going into college with scholarships, that's a five year window before they end up in the classroom.

I think we are going and we're doing a lot to take peer pros and get them for your degrees to make them teachers.

And we're seeing some movement on that.

But I think we're going to struggle with teachers and the shortage in educators for the next five years, and that includes super and people going up into the superintendents say we're going to have a shortage of people running our school districts and we're already seeing a little bit of that.

180 days schools enough.

I mean, ultimately, I think any time that you can have more educational experiences for kids, it's better for them.

Whether that's sitting in a traditional classroom or other enrichment activities during the summer, I think we could use more.

I just don't know if it's in the school setting that it's going to happen or should it happen?

Well, it's politically impossible to get lawmakers to add school days.

Would you concede that point?

I think it would be pretty difficult.

And I don't know of any group that's pushed for an expansion beyond 180.

Would that be difficult?

Well, because they answer to voters and 14 year olds don't vote.

That's point.

And their.

Parents do.

They do?

Absolutely.

Look at the literature says the more time in school, the better education the kids get.

Correct.

It would say more time that they're being educated.

Right.

Okay.

The better off so that so much in school.

So other nations in other countries around the world are ahead of us on this point.

Almost every country in Europe and Asia goes longer than the United States.

Did you see this report that a vast majority of school districts actually have this waiver where they can start before Labor Day, even though we have a state law that says you can't really start school before Labor Day.

Hardly anybody follows that.

Is that surprising to you?

It's not.

This was something I've been around this town long enough.

I can remember when local boards made that decision.

We didn't support it when they limited it.

That was a the legislature answering to the tourism industry.

And I like the idea that the legislature is considering actually listening to educators about when school should start and when it's finished.

But 80%, that's a lot of people ignoring a law.

It's a waiver so that it actually is allowed under the law.

It's not ignoring it.

Well, let's you know, if I don't like a law, get a waiver and not obey it.

The tourism industry says we need those kids.

I mean, we live in Lansing.

If you don't like a law, you work the legislature to get the law changed.

I mean, that's a matter of what voters and citizens do.

So this is a good we should get rid of that law actually.

I actually we very much support that.

All right.

And so what are you going to do when you grow up?

I want to be a Reporter.

Now tell me the truth, okay?

Mr. Wotruba nice to see you again.

Good luck and thank you for doing our program and also thanks to our panel.

Next week, more of Off the Record right here.

Please come back.

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