The Detroit School Board has filed a federal lawsuit against Governor Rick Snyder.
The Detroit school board has filed a federal lawsuit against Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder, alleging that his state-appointed emergency managers have failed to adequately address the district’s financial troubles, crumbling school buildings, and academic deficiencies.
The suit seeks class-action status on behalf of roughly 58,000 students who have attended classes in the district since 2011. That total includes students enrolled in the state’s Education Achievement Authority, a state-run district that operates the worst Michigan’s lowest-performing schools.
The suit notes the district’s declining enrollment and an ongoing scandal that has more than a dozen former administrators facing charges in a bribery and kickback scheme. Also named in the suit are at least three of the emergency managers that have run the Detroit schools; the district has been under state oversight since 2009.
“Michigan’s Emergency Manager Law and related practices were used to compromise and damage the quality of education received by all [Detroit public schools] students with life-long consequences in the name of financial urgency,” the lawsuit claims.
The suit also names former Chicago schools CEO Barbara Byrd Bennett. Byrd-Bennett pleaded guilty in 2015 to an indictment charging her with receiving money and benefits from her former employers in exchange for steering no-bid contracts worth more than $23 million to the firms. Federal investigators are also scrutinizing contracts awarded during her time in Detroit, where she worked as chief academic officer.
Snyder’s emergency manager law has faced renewed scrutiny this year as the district teeters on the brink of bankruptcy, and teachers and parents have become more vocal about their distaste for the law.
It is fair to say that state control has been a disaster for the Detroit Public Schools. Every “reform” trick has pulled, and every time the children are the losers.
The text of the plaintiffs’ brief is here.
The best line in the brief:
The Emergency Manager Law is predicated on the concept that a local financial crisis is due to the inability of local officials to address the problem. In fact, beginning in 1999 the State took over the management of the DPS which was functioning financially ‘in the black’ and with its student body performing at a level on average with the school districts of the entire state of Michigan and, in the seventeen years since, have turned the district into a virtual financial hell-hole.
The Emergency Managers appointed by the Governor, the suit alleges, drove the district into financial disaster with their profligate spending and unwise decisions.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I’m a bit skeptical about the claim that DPS operated in the black in the decade prior to 1999. I’m DEEPLY skeptical about the claim that its students performed at a level “on average with the school districts of the entire state of Michigan,” though since that is left undefined, it could mean just about anything.
Not claiming or suggesting in any way that things have been better under the EMs. But DPS has been in the toilet in a host of ways for a very long time, longer than I’ve lived in MI (since 1992). A more honest assertion would simply be that the EMs haven’t fixed anything and have in many ways made things worse. Why try to gild the lily?
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Michael Paul
http://www.mlive.com/news/detroit/index.ssf/2011/06/so_long_robert_bobb_and_thanks.html
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Diane, not understanding what you wrote prior to the link. Seems like a typo or two.
Meanwhile, Bobb was awful and his successors were, too, including the guy who was running Flint when the water turned to Lead Paint Surprise. I certainly haven’t one good word to say about them. I don’t claim for one second that they made things better or didn’t in fact make them worse. I simply question any suggestion that things were ducky in DPS BEFORE the EMs arrived. We have had some really bad governors here, but none so bold as to put in EMs where there was not at least a semblance of justification that would wash with the general public outside of Detroit, Pontiac, Benton Harbor, etc. (or, to be more direct, with the general white and Republican-leaning public).
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Michael Paul, The Detroit public schools have been in serious trouble ever since the Supreme Court’s Milliken decision in the 1970s which stopped any desegregation plan that crossed suburban lines. White flight continued, and Detroit kids were abandoned. My post did not say that things were ducky in Detroit prior to the emergency managers. That was a quote from the brief. What I have read is that Robert Bobb tripled the deficit and things have gone from bad to worse. It is terrible to claim you are helping the district but make things worse for kids and teachers.
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Diane, I never thought or said that you made such an assertion. I was strictly referring to the suit being brought by the Detroit School Board. My notion is that they would have done better to simply assert the facts about the actions of the EMs, rather than to make it appear that all was well before they got into the picture. As what you just posted supports the view that things have been bad in DPS for a very long time, how do we disagree?
My concern is that it’s no longer enough to put appropriate blame on those responsible, but to try to make it appear that all ills can be left at one doorstep. The way the suit seems to be putting things strikes me as another case of that erroroneous tactic.
There was a time when there was a lot of good done inside of DPS, but most of that was before I moved to the region in 1992. High stakes testing was already a plague there when I arrived, according to DPS math teachers I met around 1993 or so, and I know from work I did there in the ’90s and more frequently thereafter that in that regard DPS was like a canary in the testing coalmine. It’s been awful now for a long time, and while I agree completely that the EMs have only made things worse, there’s no shortage of blame to go around.
I do not blame the victims. But the only innocent ones are the kids. To some extent, few of us adults, if any, can honestly claim to be blameless.
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Hey what do you know about TEACHERS PAY TEACHERS?
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¿Qué?
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This is brilliant! Why not encourage every district in which students are not receiving their share of funding to do this immediately? Maybe that could prevent charter schools and reformers from taking over public education before it’s after the fact and our kids have to be the ones to suffer.
Mary Krotki Teacher in Bridgeport, CT
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“The Detroit school board has filed a federal lawsuit against Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder, alleging that HIS state-appointed emergency managers have failed to adequately address the district’s financial troubles, crumbling school buildings, and academic deficiencies.” Hallelujah! The buck stops with the Governor and Snyder has, simply put, been incompetent at his job during his time in office. I hope this sets an example for the nation. Governors and their appointees work for the betterment of their states…..Ahem! Governor Christie, Governor Scott, Governor Snyder, and all the rest: Do us a favor and don’t mention jobs, businesses, or any of the other talking points without first telling us how well you are doing YOUR job of educating ALL of your populace.
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“The Detroit school board has filed a federal lawsuit against Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder, alleging that HIS state-appointed emergency managers have failed to adequately address the district’s financial troubles, crumbling school buildings, and academic deficiencies.”
Hallelujah! It is time for a little accountability at the top of this mess. Governor Snyder is responsible for the progress, or lack thereof, that HIS appointees made for the betterment of eVeRy resident of the state of Michigan. The Detroit Emergency Manager(s) were HIS appointees during HIS term, and they made a very difficult situation even worse. So often one hears governors talk about bringing in new businesses and saving money to help business. How does one expect a state to thrive without an educated populace to work in these businesses? Education is the number one investment a state can make towards employment and the buck stops at the top.
-A teacher tired of obtuse politicians not providing the resources needed to “make it happen.”
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