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Norbert Bufka

Author  ยท  Historian

Blog posts August 2018

Labor unions in Michigan

An essential component of any business operation, whether manufacturing or service, whether private or public, is the employee, whether there is only one or thousands.  Adam Smith in his Wealth of Nations, the often quoted authority on capitalism, envisioned the employee an integral part of the busi…

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Shared time instruction in Michigan

Students in nonpublic schools and those who are homeschooled are eligible to take non-core classes at the local public school. Originally these were subjects like art, music, foreign languages, and gym but  the legislature has encouraged these programs as a way to offer choice and opportunities to m…

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School safety

School safety in my youth were mundane concerns compared to the safety issue today. School shootings occur far more frequently in the United States than anywhere else in the world. When combined with other mass shootings, eleven of the worst 50 mass shootings were in the United States.  We have only…

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Schools of choice

“Schools of choice” refers to an effort to give students a choice in the school they attend. One way, allowed in Michigan, is to let students choose a different public school than the neighborhood school. This program also allows students to go to another public school district if that other distric…

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Nonpublic schools in Michigan

A nonpublic school is any school financed and supported by an entity other than the government, although they may receive some tax dollars for special programs. 

48% of the nonpublic schools are Catholic with enrolment of 54,221 pupils. Others are Christian schools, 13 percent (14,385); Lutheran…

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Homeschooling in Michigan

All fifty states allow parents to homeschool their children. Michigan is one of eleven states who does not require parents to register their children with the local school district or the state, so it is estimated that more than 50,000 children in Michigan are being homeschooled. [a]

The Michigan…

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Funding of public schools in Michigan

Traditionally local public schools were supported by local property taxes, with voter approval. This reliance onproperty taxes produced very different funding from district to district. In 1993 Proposal A allowed the state to collect property taxes on residential property and distribute them more ev…

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Charter Schools in Michigan

In 1993 the Michigan legislature authorized the establishment of Public School Academies, commonly called Charter Schools. One Charter School was set up that year and the total mushroomed to 302 in 2016-2017. The number declined to 294 in 2017-2018. [a]

Public Authorizing bodies approve and overs…

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pre-K through 12th grade education in Michigan

Public schools have been a priority in Michigan from the earliest days. They hav aspired to high standards. As the state grew and our country advanced control of schools shifted from over 7,000 small local districts to 540 K-12 districts today. There are 54 intermediate school districts, which provi…

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