After months of simmering on a back burner while political campaigns dominated the spotlight, the battle for control over a pair of local school districts is red hot once more, fueled by mounting lawsuits and loudmouth political posturing.
The Detroit Board of Education, which reclaimed academic control over the district from emergency manager Roy Roberts after voters repealed PA 4, is now seeking to remove all of the city's schools from the Education Achievement Authority (EAA), a hastily created "recovery" district that is supposedly composed of the state's worst performing schools. Roberts, a retired GM executive tapped by Snyder to turn around the city's school system, also oversees the EAA.
From the Detroit News:
The move could spell the end of Michigan's statewide recovery school district.
"Everything is for the benefit of the children," board president LaMar Lemmons said.
The vote likely sets up a renewed legal fight with the state and DPS Emergency Financial Manager Roy Roberts over control of the state's largest school district.
State officials dispute the board's authority to pull out of the EAA.
Not unexpectedly, the state is fighting not only the effort to get Detroit schools out of the EAA, but is also continuing to challenge the legality of the Detroit board. State AG Bill Schuette filed a suit this summer to dismiss seven of the board's 11 members. Schuette too says he's going to court out of a desire "that our children get the quality education they were promised by our Michigan Constitution."
That suit, which has been decried as racist by the board and its attorney, was adjourned Wednesday by a judge until next year.
Meanwhile, in the battered enclave of Highland Park, Robert Davis, the school board member indicted earlier this year for allegedly stealing more than $125,000 from the HP district, has filed a lawsuit to have Roy Roberts removed.
Highland Park schools are also under EAA authority. (Further, Davis' suit comes even as the ACLU is suing the state and the Highland Park district for violating a state law that says students must read at or above grade level.)
So in sum, the fate of our children's education rests on the outcomes of fights between alleged embezzlers, proven political incompetents, extremist right-wing power brokers and tired old auto executives who helped run GM into the ground during the 80s and 90s.
As far as I can tell, they should all be jailed for child abuse.
For what it's worth, though, I think Davis and Lemmons are right in suggesting that Roberts go. The state is as culpable for the recent conditions in Detroit schools as anyone else, having left the district with a huge deficit following its first takeover in 1999. Jennifer Granholm appointee Robert Bobb only compounded the problems with his shady deals with consultants and hacks like Barbara Byrd Bennett. The acid-tongued, crotchety Roberts hasn't helped at all, despite his proclamations about shifting debt.
And what's been the EAA's big accomplishment thus far?
Bringing in the wildly overpaid John Covington, a former Kansas City school official whose "leadership" there led to the state of Missouri stripping KC schools of their state accreditation.
Meanwhile, with its 11-member board, the EAA seems just as bloated as the Detroit Board, whose history of terrible decisions and paralyzing political infighting long ago made the case for smaller, more efficient district governance.
That said, while I believe in Detroiters' right to elect their own board, I have absolutely no faith in many of the choices Detroiters make. Sure there are a few serious figures on the board, but they can't be close to effective with re-treads and clowns gumming up the works. (And how in the heck is it that voters can't wash out, once and for all, political stains like the Reverend Murray??)
Structurally, the Detroit Board is too big and, thus, too vulnerable to attracting an overabundance of hacks. We just don't need four "at-large" members for a school district with a shrinking student body.
Meanwhile, the board's handful of moves -- such as hiring John Telford as interim superintendent -- don't seem to be any radical departure from the same old, same old anymore than the EAA's overpaying of Covington. Even the DPS board didn't seem particularly excited about the hire, characterizing it more as a stop-gap measure than anything else.
But that's just it. Too much of these long-running battles, in both Highland Park and Detroit, have been all about show, about empty posturing done in the name of "what's best for the kids" or "the people's right to decide" or "the state's obligation to educate." Truth is, much of this charade that's re-heating has been far more about sating adult egos, controlling contract dollars and looking for the next political balcony to shout from.
Guys like Robert Davis might be correct about the need for state appointees to hit the road. But for the sake of these districts' schoolchildren, guys like Robert Davis and some members of the Detroit Board of Education need to follow those appointees right out that same exit.
