Education

With the COVID-19 shutting down K-12 schools across the country, many parents and caregivers have suddenly become full-time homeschool teachers. It can be hard to adjust to this new routine and you may feel like you're dropping the ball. To help, we spoke with homeschoolers, both old and newly-appointed, to gather some tips that may help if you’re feeling overwhelmed.

In yet another step that would have been unthinkable just a week ago, Michigan is asking the federal government for a waiver on federally-mandated statewide student assessments this year.

In Michigan, that assessment is the M-STEP test. It’s given to all 3rd-8th and 11th graders in public schools. It was scheduled to start the week of April 13 and run through May 28.

Updated Thursday, March 12 at 3:32 p.m.:

On Thursday afternoon, the Michigan High School Athletic Association (MHSAA) suspended postseason events indefinitely. This includes the ice hockey, girls gymnastics, and lower peninsula boys swimming and diving finals, which were scheduled for this weekend.

Additionally canceled are the girls and boys basketball tournaments, which were midway through early rounds of playoff progressions. 

Dearborn school officials announced Wednesday that the district is temporarily closing an elementary school after a staffer had been exposed to another person who tested positive for COVID-19.   

The school is the first in Michigan to be shut down due to a potential coronavirus exposure. 

Superintendent Glenn Maleyko tried to reassure parents during an evening news conference.

“The school is at a low risk,” says Maleyko. “However, out of an abundance of caution, we are going to close Whitmore-Bolles until the test results have been confirmed.”

The Paw Paw school district is dropping a controversial nickname.

The southwest Michigan district’s school board voted six to one this week to drop its “Redskins” nickname and mascot. 

The district has been under pressure for several years to make the change.  In 2017, the school board voted four to three to keep the controversial nickname.

Governor Gretchen Whitmer, Attorney General Dana Nessel, and other top state officials put Wayne State University board members on notice Wednesday.

That came in the form of a letter urging the board to adopt a code of conduct.

Flint Community Schools Superintendent Derrick Lopez filed a formal complaint earlier this month with the Genesee Intermediate School District over special education funding.

Flint gets less money from the county compared to other districts, even though it has more kids who qualify for special education services. 

The Romulus school board suspended Acting Superintendent Flinnoia Hall for ten days without pay on Thursday, citing violations of the district's code of professional standards.

Hall called an African American district employee a racial slur and another profane slur during an open school board meeting Feb. 10th. Hall is also African American.

The president of the University of Michigan  apologized to "anyone who was harmed" by a late doctor after several former students said he molested them during medical exams at the school.

A former University of Michigan-Flint employee has filed a federal lawsuit against the university, alleging she was fired for advocating for better resources for LGBTQ students.

Four Saline high school students have sued their school district for punishing them over racist social media posts that used the 'N' word.

The federal lawsuit, filed on Tuesday, alleges that the Saline Area Schools violated the plaintiff's constitutional rights to free speech and due process, and that the school district did not have the authority to suspend or expel them over the posts. 

Grand Valley State University is offering a new online degree program aimed at adult students. The program expands on the online degrees already offered by the university.

GVSU president Philomena Mantella  says the new program will offer more flexibility.

Students at community colleges around the state will be able to transfer more credits to four-year colleges and universities under a deal signed this week.

Erica Lee Orians is the executive director of the Michigan Center for Student Success at the Michigan Community College Association. She says the agreement gives community college students more choices about where to transfer.

Updated research suggests thousands of Michigan third graders could be forced to repeat the grade because they don’t read well enough.

This is the first class to come under the retention requirement laid out in Michigan’s 2016 third grade reading law.

The Education Policy Innovation Collaborative at Michigan State University looked at reading scores on Michigan's standardized test, which is used to flag students for retention.

Eastern Michigan University and two former student athletes have reached a settlement in a Title IX lawsuit filed in June 2018.

The suit alleges sex discrimination in sports program opportunities at EMU. It arose after EMU eliminated its women's varsity softball and tennis teams in March 2018 to address budgetary concerns.  Two men's teams were also eliminated at that time.

The University of Michigan has put its provost, Martin Philbert, on administrative leave, following several accusations of sexual misconduct. The provost is the university's second highest ranking administrator.

The Free Application for Federal Student Aid, more commonly known as the FAFSA, is a critical form for anyone who wants help paying for higher education.

But Governor Gretchen Whitmer says Michigan’s FAFSA completion rate was only about 56% last year.

For Michiganders hoping to expand their vocabularies in 2020, Wayne State University has some suggestions.

The Oxford English Dictionary estimates there are about 170 thousand words in current use in the English language. But there are more than a million words in the language overall. 

Late last summer, Eastern Michigan University's Athletic Director Scott Wetherbee gave a tour of the new Student-Athlete Performance Center. It’s the first major construction project for EMU’s 400-plus student athletes in 20 years.

“I loved the conversation about naming the entry into the football suite after you,” Wetherbee wrote in a follow up email to EMU Regent Michael Hawks August 1st.

The state’s second-largest school district and its teachers’ union begin mediation Wednesday, in an attempt to move contract talks that have become stalled and acrimonious.

Utica Community Schools has been bargaining with the Utica Education Association since March. The union’s contract expired in June.

Flint voters will decide in March if they will support a millage that will help eliminate their school district’s deficit.

On Wednesday night, the school board voted to put the millage on the ballot.    

School board members had a choice of what to ask Flint voters. They could ask for either a renewal of the district’s current sinking fund millage, which pays for things like roof repairs, or ask voters to support a deficit reduction bond and a smaller sinking fund. Board members opted for the latter. 

“Doing two things: number one, helping us to make sure we reduce our deficit more quickly. And to actually also keep our buildings safe,” says Superintendent Derrick Lopez.

A federal program awarded $7.7 million to charter schools in Michigan that never opened. That's according to a report from the Network for Public Education.

A total of 257 charter schools in Michigan received money from the federal program. 72 of them never opened. No other state had that many unopened charter schools that received money from the Charter Schools Program.

Flint school district officials are putting off decisions on closing some district schools.

Flint Community Schools are facing a multi-million dollar deficit. Earlier this month, district officials floated a proposal to eliminate the debt, that included closing some schools in January.