Michigan bureaucrats are dumping $10 million into "staff retention" grants to paper over a teacher exodus they refuse to explain, while thousands of miles away, Los Angeles parents are fighting to stop the very same establishment from slashing school funding to cover its own fiscal mismanagement.
When the public school system fails, the bureaucracy protects itself. In Michigan, state officials announced 239 school districts will receive nearly $10 million for mentoring and induction programs. The money comes from Section 27h of the fiscal year 2025 State School Aid Act. Nearly $8.5 million goes to 199 districts for mentor stipends, training, and staffing costs. Another $1.5 million goes to 118 districts to contract with "approved mentoring service providers" for administrators.
State Superintendent Glenn Maleyko spun the spending as putting students first: “If we want to put students first, we need to keep outstanding new educators in the field.” State Board of Education President Pamela Pugh added that the grants prove districts are "committed to strengthening the skills of new teachers and administrators and retaining those educators by having them learn from more experienced educators."
Neither official addressed why educators are fleeing in the first place. Throwing taxpayer dollars at mentorship programs doesn't fix a poisoned workplace or a curriculum parents hate; it just subsidizes the exit wound. And a $1.5 million carve-out for "approved" outside providers reeks of the usual consultant class cashing in on the crisis.
Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, the education establishment is showing what happens when the bill comes due for years of bloat. Furious parents are protesting LAUSD's plan to eliminate approximately $100 million in additional funding for 42 affiliated charter schools serving nearly 25,000 students. Organizers describe the annual allocation being slashed as roughly $10 million. The cuts threaten 112 full-time positions, and parents warn the bloodletting will leave kids unsupervised and unsafe.
“So who’s going to watch our kids at recess if there’s an emergency drill, whether it’s a fire drill, an earthquake, or a lockdown?” one parent told ABC7, as reported by the New York Post. “We don’t have enough people in the yard to supervise our kids, and you’re asking me to send my 4-year-old to school? You promised that you would keep my kids safe and help them learn. So why is LAUSD cutting the funding?”
LAUSD claims it faces a projected $3.6 billion deficit thanks to declining enrollment, rising costs, and the expiration of one-time federal COVID-19 relief funding. The district defended the cuts as a move to bring "greater consistency" to school funding, since the supplemental Charter Block Grant wasn't given to traditional district schools. Consistency, in bureaucracy speak, means dragging everyone down to the same struggling level rather than asking where the billions went.
Whether it’s Michigan spraying $10 million at a retention crisis or California gutting charter schools to plug a deficit, the pattern is clear: the system never interrogates its own failures. Until officials answer why staff are running for the doors, $10 million is just a down payment on the next round of exits.
