Jack Martin, the emergency manager for Detroitpublic schools, has canceled his proposal to cut teachers’ salaries by 10% and to increase class sizes to as many as 43. This is great news for the children and teachers of Detroit!
“In place of the pay cuts, Jack Martin will ask state education officials to extend the district’s five-year deficit elimination plan to seven years, consider layoffs for non-school employees and look to revenue increases from future property sales and possible student enrollment increases.
“Facing a fierce backlash from teachers, parents and even the state school superintendent, Martin announced the reversal of the planned cuts as part of the district’s plan to eliminate its $127 million deficit.
“The district’s deficit elimination plan, submitted to the Michigan Department of Education and approved last week, was intended to make up for the loss of a projected $18.5 million in revenue from a countywide school tax that voters rejected Aug. 5.
“Detroit Public Schools’ sole focus is and must remain providing the highest quality education possible to the children of Detroit,” Martin said during a news conference.”
From The Detroit News: http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20140826/SCHOOLS/308260087#ixzz3BWxXkqaf
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Now, wouldn’t it be truly benevolent if Zuckerberg donated cash to Detroit’s schools? How about it, Koch brothers? Gates? Bloomberg? Broad? Walton?
Crickets, right?
Frankly, I want all of the above OUT of education completely – and they can keep their tainted money. The more private “philanthropists” “donate” to public education, the more excuse there is to cut public funding, leaving public education relying on the “benevolence” of billionaires.
The issue is they “donate” with strings to charters, and donate millions (Newark) that go to consultants, and lobby and donate to school board elections, etc. – and that’s that shame of it. Too bad they never give for the good of giving, and to truly benefit the kids they so desperately want to “save.” That’s my point.
“The more private “philanthropists” “donate” to public education, the more excuse there is to cut public funding, leaving public education relying on the “benevolence” of billionaires.” Dienne, this needs to be made into bumperstickers!
I agree. It would be nice if they would all just pay their taxes without taking advantage of all the loopholes that most folks don’t have. Then they would be “donating” to good causes the same way most people do.
One of the biggest loopholes that economists have urged for years to be closed is the mortgage interest deduction. The benefits to primarily to the wealthy and it encourages folks to concentrate their wealth in real estate, a risky proposition as the experience in Detroit shows.
And yet I oppose eliminating the mortgage interest deduction.
Comment on the mortgage interest deduction. I claim this on my taxes and I am by no means wealthy, far from in fact. Obviously the more wealthy you are the more you can claim but eliminating it would also hurt the middle and lower class.
Sharon,
Most of the benefits of that tax deduction go to relatively wealthy households. This arises because wealthy households are more likely to own houses to begin with, are more likely to have large mortgage interest payments, and face a higher federal income tax rate.
I don’t understand how he couldn’t have figured out the unpopularity of this proposal before raising everyone’s hackles. I don’t understand how he could have thought that this would have benefited anyone in any way. He needs some organizational behavior for administrators PD. This is a somewhat favorable result for many, many dedicated professionals who harnessed the power of social media induced activism. They never deserved to start their new school year off this way.
This is what Cuomo has done in all of NYS. He was much sneakier about how he went about it though and now our schools statewide have had to cut cut cut. NYS now has a 6 billion dollar surplus and a new study shows that it owes its school system over 5 billion dollars. The majority of that surplus is in money stolen from our students edcuation. Why do politicians think that educating our young is so unimportant, why do our citizens allow them to feel this way and why has it been so easy for them to create a negative atmosphere about education and teachers? Way to go Detroit for standing up for yourselves. Until states fully fund education we are going to continue to see this sort of story though. And until people begin to see that when the states cut costs they do so by passing it on to the local municipalities politicians will continue to get away with it.
We have had 40+ in our classes in high school for years and years. Last year many had 50. The EM knew about the class overages last year, even visited the schools, yet nothing was done. I’m glad the pay cut was canceled! Hope the light of the public continues to shine bright on their shenanigans!