Michigan Votes Forum

Introduced in the Senate on May 25, 2007, to require all regular school districts within an Intermediate School District to adopt a common school calendar

The vote was 20 in favor, 17 opposed and 1 not voting

(Senate Roll Call 208 at Senate Journal 65)

Click here to view bill details.

of local control? Let each school district set their own calendar based on their own needs. There is no reason to mandate that every district follow lock step into the same calendar. You are proposing a solution for a non-existant problem.

THE CASE??? it seems that this legislature is quite fond of proposing solutions for non-existant problems, and NEGLECTING to solve the obvious ones.

Actually this is a great piece of needed legislation to push local districts into the cooperative mode, and will allow for a savings of dollars. Unifying calendars within ISD's will allow for shared service schedules to open and close together (tech centers, special needs centers, etc..). These are high daily cost programs and a unified calendar will be a good thing.

School districts are in a better position of determining the school calendar. Power belongs at the local level, not at the State or Federal level.

Real savings for all districts within an ISD can be achieved via the "common calmedar."

It seems logical to think that districts would do this now, and some do, but not all. So kids involved with ed-tech miss either vacations with family or classes, since their school district (& siblings) may have different breaks than ISD. This is easy, logical solution. It makes so much sense that it shouldn't be needed, but it is. Going ISD-wide with calendar is still local. Our superintendents meet monthly. Add unified calendar to agenda.

'Power belongs at the local level, not at the State or Federal level' But then let them get ALL their funding from the local level! Feeding at all the troughs should not come with no strings attached.

This could be a real step BACKWARD in contract negotiations for some districts. Some districts (esp. urban districts) value Martin Luther King Day. Others do not. I can see this being a real problem in ISDs with urban AND rural districts. This is not clear enough for me.

I vote no. Discrimination. Will this be a problem with districts with few snow days and many snow days? Will we all take MLK day off? LEAVE IT ALONE! Will be ALL get the first day of DEER SEASON off? lol

Start school after labor day and end around Memorial day just like colleges do. It about time the legislature put the schools on the same time frame

Senator Whitmer, under her constitutional right of protest (Art. 4, Sec. 18), protested against the passage of Senate Bill No.549 and moved that the statement she made during the discussion of the bill be printed as her reasons for voting "no." The motion prevailed. Senator Whitmer's statement is as follows: There are two fundamental issues with this bill as I can see. One is the charter school issue, which we've already talked about. The other is it was raised in committee that perhaps this was aimed at taking another tool for collective bargaining off the table for employee groups. The response was, "Well, if we're really doing that, we wouldn't have included employee groups in the text of the bill." However, today the bill was substituted to do exactly that and take the employee groups out of the bill. So it begs the question, what is the true motivation? I don't know. I think the real motivation is savings--taxpayers' savings--but that is the singular change in the bill that happened on the floor today, and it raises a fundamental question about what's going on here. This is my second pause for concern, and these are the two reasons I personally will be voting against this bill.

Senator Whitmer's statement is as follows: This bill before us is about encouraging schools within an ISD--not encouraging, mandating I should say--to adopt a common calendar. The motive is a good one. The motive is to save taxpayers dollars by fostering efficient, cost-effectivesavings between districts. That is good, but this is noteworthy because ISDs can do this now and many of them actually are. In committee, however, it was asked why doesn't this bill apply to charter schools. We gave them a vague answer. No one could really say that in some sort of a workgroup that it was determined that they did not want to be included in the bill. It seems to me that if it's good public policy for taxpayer-funded public schools, then it's good policy for taxpayer-funded charter schools. I know the proponents are going to say this is probably going to be too onerous, charters are different, but at the end of the day, it's all taxpayer dollars. If there are savings to be had and it's good public policy, then we should include charter schools. If it is too onerous, guess what, the bill has a section where they can apply for a waiver just like any public school could. So I think this makes a lot of sense to amend the bill in this way. Accordingly, I respectfully ask for your support of this amendment.

Senator Kuiper's statement is as follows: As I shared with the amendment sponsor, our objection to this amendment is not because it's too onerous on charter schools, but rather because in recent history, ISDs have excluded most of our charters from utilizing their services. If we want charters to abide by the same rules and work with the ISDs to establish a common calendar, then I think it's important for us to also include charters in many of the services that they are precluded from utilizing through the ISD today. I would ask members to object to this amendment. If we're going to come back to this issue in the future, we can do it, but it should be under an expanded scope.

I am a teacher who is employed by an ISD but my classroom is housed in a local district. The ISD and the local district do not have the same calendar and it is very confusing for both staff and students. I have parents who call me when we have the day off because their kids didn't get picked up for school. This is wonderful for our county.

why would you want to change the date. people could get hurt a lot because there's crazy people in the world.

not only hunt,but they drive, and vote. is that going to stop you from doing any of the above?