Michigan schools see fewer students, more staff

The superintendent of Port Huron’s public school system said that every year he must replace teachers who leave his district. He blames low teacher salaries.

But the superintendent was Harlan Davis, and he made his statement more than 100 years ago.

“Fewer and fewer of our college graduates are entering the teaching profession,” Davis wrote in the June 9, 1926, edition of The Times Herald. “By observation, they have found that teaching does not offer a career. Most cities have a teachers’ salary schedule but the difference between the minimum salary and maximum salary is not sufficient to attract and hold the kind of people our schools need.”

Low teacher pay has been a familiar rallying cry for school administrators, teachers unions and advocates for more school funding for more than a century.

Today, more than 100 years after Davis’ account, several Michigan newspapers reported that teacher pay is down 29% since 1995 after inflation is accounted for, according to a study produced by Michigan State University’s Education Policy Innovation Collaborative.

The average teacher salary in Michigan was $48,166 in 1995, or $99,229 when adjusted for inflation. And 1995 was the highest average salary for Michigan teachers in the last 54 years. The average teacher’s salary in 2024-25 was $71,023.

But salaries can vary greatly. The average salary of a teacher in Rochester Community Schools, in Oakland County, was $87,011 in 2024-25, according to the state’s 10-14 bulletin. The average salary of a teacher at Eau Claire Public Schools, near the Indiana border, was $40,202. Five miles south of Eau Claire, the average salary of a Berrien Springs Public Schools teacher was $71,375.

Michigan was a different state in 1995.

Enrollment in public schools here was 1.685 million in 1995. In 2025-26, the state had 1.419 million students, or a drop of 266,000 students – the equivalent of the Detroit Public School Community District, plus four others of the same size.

School funding in Michigan has spiked in these post-COVID-19 times.

Total funding (local, state, federal) for K-12 schools in 2016-17 was $18.8 billion, when adjusted for inflation. Total funding for K-12 schools in 2025-26 was $21.2 billion, according to the Senate Fiscal Agency.

One reason why less money goes to teacher salaries may be that the state’s public school districts are hiring more and more people despite enrolling fewer and fewer students.

In 2016-17, the state’s public school districts had a combined 192,881 full-time equivalent positions filled to serve 1.532 million students.

The number of public school FTE positions rose to 228,216 in 2025-26, with 1.419 million students enrolled.

Over the past nine years, there were 35,335 more full-time employees but 113,000 fewer students.