Election is over. Now what? The future of Michigan schools

The future of Michigan's schools, the students, the teachers, and so much more is kind of a big hot topic right now with election leaders. How do they improve the education in Michigan? What needs to be done? And so much more. We brought in Superintendent Dr. Randy Speck. Good to have you back. It's great to be here. I'm so glad you're here because this is something that we've been talking about a lot. Local government, what role they play with schools and education. Talk to me about the elected leaders and how they can help. The education here in Michigan. Yeah, when you think about an election, especially one as big as it was on Tuesday, really three stories. You've got a national election that gets a lot of attention, the Senate, things like that. Then you've got state elections with governor and state reps and state senate. And then you have local school boards. And that's where a lot of the action takes place. Because Michigan, as a K-12 state... is very localized so a lot of decisions take place at that local school board level so you have a lot of folks who come out for that local school community because each community is different so one school board can have their own certain agenda and the adjacent neighboring school board could be a little bit different as well. So in Michigan we're going to have now a Democrat governor, we've got a Democrat house, Democrat senate, so it'll be interesting to see what happens with the Department of Education and how it affects all of us at our local school level. Absolutely. Now I want to talk about the student performance. We've seen a little bit of, we need a lot of improvement I should say. I know we've talked about reading and math and a lot of other subjects. Talk to me about academics and where we need to see more achievement. Yeah, well, I think everyone starts with reading because that's where you have to start. You can't do math. You can't do anything else without reading. Michigan has fallen in the last several years when it comes to where we are nationally with reading. But one of the most important things that you've seen in other states that we are starting to see here in Michigan is consistency. You can't change every two to three years. You have to have a plan. You have to have political leaders who are going to give local school leaders like myself the ability to have a plan and stick with it and not change every time there's a new. cycle of politicians who come in. I think that's what we're starting to see. We have now some new mandates from the state level that all of our teachers have to be trained in a certain type of reading methods called the science of reading. That's going to be something that we've seen in other states. Mississippi is one that gets kind of the most attention. But I think here in Michigan, If we can stick with it. Then we're going to be okay. You know, I'm glad you mentioned teachers because are we doing enough to recruit teachers and give them the salaries and the benefits that they're looking for? Different school districts are going to do it different ways, right? And so some school districts are going to have big fund balances. They're going to have the ability to have better contracts than others. But all of us, and I think that's where parents start to look at, they want to choose where they want to send their children. Maybe it's to a private school. Maybe it's to a charter school like what we lead in Hamtramck in Detroit. Maybe it's our local school district. But they want to go where teachers are being valued and invested in. And because the teachers are going to return that back to their children in the classroom. Yeah. And you know, another thing that's been a topic is school safety, as well as even mental health. You know, a lot of kids are balancing mental health these days. Parents are dealing with a lot as well with their children. Are schools doing enough to balance the situation? Well, they have the ability to tap into a lot of funding right now at the state level. In fact, in all of our schools, we've got mental health professionals, social workers, guidance counselors. So we're going to take a minute. To be able to have a real wraparound service for all of our kids is something that started to take place a few years ago and I think schools really are taking it serious and now we have the funding to make sure we can do it. One of our most difficult challenges are to find the people, find the people who are credentialed, who want to work in school. I want to talk about preparedness because, you know, we hear a lot of times K-12, maybe on the elementary side and reading. Are we preparing our kids in high school for the next step? The going to college, getting a job and all that preparedness. Are we doing enough? We're starting to. And I think, again, it goes through the cycles. We moved away years ago from being college ready. And then it was all about being career ready. It's got to be a balance. You have some kids who are really looking forward to going to a four-year university. You have some kids who they just want to go to community college. The state of Michigan makes that available up through the age of 25. And there are some kids who have great opportunities in HVAC, in plumbing, in electrical work, in skill trades, which is so needed and so out there. So schools have the opportunity to have a balanced approach and prepare different pathways for kids in whatever direction they want to go. Absolutely. Dr. Randy, how can people find you, get more information? I know you're the superintendent of education management and networks, certainly doing an incredible job at Hamtramck, Detroit and beyond. Yeah, we've got a great network of charter schools in Hamtramck, Sterling Heights and Detroit. You can find us at emaninc.com. And we'll put that on our website as well. Bottom line here, politics versus education. How can these elected officials help us progress and move forward? Well, they can listen. They can listen and they can act on the promises that they've made. You can't do a whole lot always at the federal level, but locally, especially in Lansing, listen to what we're saying and do what you said you were going to do.