LANSING, MI (AP)-- Certain retired teachers could return to the classroom because of a shortage of substitutes and not enough full-time teachers in some subjects under legislation up for a vote.
The Michigan Senate is expected to approve the bill on Tuesday. A law allowing teachers who retired after mid-2010 to teach again without losing their pension expired nearly 18 months ago.
Reasons for the substitute teaching shortage are varied, including an improved unemployment rate. But school administrators and the companies they contract with for substitutes say lawmakers also are at fault.
They contend that retired teachers who often have been deemed the best substitutes were snared in legislators' 2012 crackdown on well-paid superintendents retiring, collecting a pension and being rehired by an outside agency to do the same job.
