Education Week - July 20, 2016 - 18

Latest Effort
In Detroit
Draws Doubt
debt. In the new district, educators
will have that money, around $50
million in the coming school year, at
their disposal for use in classrooms.
While Snyder, a Republican, is
touting the move as a "new beginning" for Detroit's public schools, not
everyone sees it that way, because
many of the district's old problems
persist: hemorrhaging enrollment,
dilapidated schools, low teacher morale, and constant administrative
turnover among them.
Sticking the old district with
nearly $500 million in operating
debt allows the Detroit schools to
avoid bankruptcy, but potential pitfalls abound.
The credit rating agency Standard and Poor's downgraded its
credit rating for two series of Detroit school bonds, casting doubt on
whether the old district can repay
the bondholders, because it no longer captures state property taxes,
the primary funding source for
schools in the state. Money from the
state's $250 million annual payment
from tobacco companies will help
pay off the old district's debt. The
agency also warned that additional
downgrades are a possibility.

Profound Problems
Researchers and people inside
the district also wonder if the split
is merely a cosmetic fix for a school
system that has been re-branded as
the Detroit Public Schools Community District, but still faces many of
the same catastrophic problems.
The legislation "addresses the
structure, but not the substance of
schooling in the district," said Camille Wilson, an associate professor of education at the University
of Michigan. "There's nothing that
addresses the dilapidated facilities,
high teacher turnover, high principal turnover, the lack of basic
resources in schools, safety ... the
issues that families and students
grapple with."
The number of students enrolled in

Carlos Osorio/AP-File

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

Detroit's public schools has been on
the decline for decades, fueled by the
city's plummeting population, sinking
graduation rates, financial mismanagement, and corruption probes.
A decade ago, the district had
131,000 students. This year, that number was 46,000-a 65 percent decline.
Amid the enrollment drops, the
district's leadership has been a
model of instability. A revolving door
of at least seven superintendents
and state-appointed emergency
managers have led the district in
recent years. Federal indictments
from vendor kickback schemes, tutoring scams, and other crimes have
thinned the administrative ranks.
"There's blame enough to go
around. They've tried everything-
and ran into the exact same problem," said Griffith, the school finance analyst. He monitored the
state's K-12 education budget as a
policy analyst for the Michigan state
Senate in the mid-to-late 1990s.

'Fresh Start?'
The package of bills, backed by
the Republican-led legislature,
would help pay off $467 million in

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operating debt and provide a $150
million loan for start-up funding to help get the new, debt-free
district off the ground. But critics
maintain that the new district has
been shortchanged. Its leaders requested almost double the amount
in startup costs and the district's

There's blame enough
to go around. They've
tried everything--and
ran into the exact
same problem."
MICHAEL GRIFFITH
Education Commission of the States

current school board has filed a
lawsuit in an effort to refuse the
funds and reverse the split, arguing that the interest rates on the
state-issued loan to make up the
difference are too high.
But the current board has little,
if any, influence. The Snyder-signed
legislation stripped the panel of its
responsibilities. Under the law,
Detroit residents will elect a new
school board in November, returning the district to local control with
some state oversight retained.
To keep tabs on the budget, a
finance review commission, established after the city's bankruptcy,
has expanded to provide oversight of the school district, which
has been led by a series of stateappointed emergency managers
since 2009.
The legislation also strengthens
anti-strike provisions that may discourage, or even prevent, teacher
sickouts. A series of coordinated
sickouts last winter during which
teachers called in sick en masse to
protest their working conditions
and compensation helped shine the

national spotlight on the district's
fiscal troubles and dilapidated
buildings.
"This legislation gives Michigan's
comeback city a fresh start in education," Gov. Snyder said in a prepared statement after signing the
legislation.
"Now the residents of Detroit
need to engage with their schools
and help find good leaders who can
provide the best possible chance of
success for families in the city."
The current transition manager, Steven Rhodes, is the federal judge who oversaw the city's
historic bankruptcy case. Shortly
after Rhodes came on board, he appointed Alycia Meriweather, a longtime Detroit schools administrator,
as interim superintendent to oversee academics in the district.
Meriweather is working with
district staff and a citywide
academic advisory council to launch
a new academic plan for the district,
which routinely scores the worst
among big-city school districts on the
National Assessment of Educational
Progress in math and reading.
"We're optimistic because we get
an opportunity to start new, but we
have a huge challenge before us,"
said Detroit schools spokeswoman
Chrystal Wilson. "Right now, the
parents are trying to figure out
what's going on. It's our responsibility to engage them so that they feel
like this is [their district]."
It's a move to help the district
restore trust and stem further enrollment losses. Unsatisfied parents
have increasingly turned to charter
schools, which now educate a majority of the public school students in
the city.

Chartered Course
About 52,000 of the city's public
schools students, roughly 53 percent, attend charters, according to
a report from the National Alliance
for Public Charter Schools. That
percentage is second only to New
Orleans, where nearly every public

Steadily falling student enrollment
in Detroit's public school system
has forced the closure of some
buildings, including Southwestern
High School. The school has been
closed since 2012.

school in the city is a charter.
Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan and
Detroit's delegates in the state legislature hoped to gain more sway
over city-based charters, especially
on where the schools are allowed
to locate. They expressed concerns
that large swaths of the city have
no schools, while some neighborhoods are overrun with education
options. Charters in the city are
almost exclusively run by for-profit
charter management organizations.
But the bailout package nixed
plans for the Detroit Education
Commission, a panel of political
appointees that would have regulated the location of traditional and
charter schools in the city. Charter
sector leaders, which lobbied heavily against the creation of such
a commission, feared the panel
could have created a de facto cap
on charter growth in the city, said
Dan Quisenberry, the president of
the Michigan Association of Public School Academies, a statewide
charter school organization.
"This is about improving student outcomes and we shouldn't
be about protecting particular
systems or particular schools,"
Quisenberry said.
Instead of the commission, the
law calls for the creation of an advisory council that would produce
non-binding recommendations on
where schools are needed and study
a potential citywide transportation
and common enrollment systems for
all students.
"Our hope is that more kids
are in good schools whether that's
[Detroit public] or a charter," said
Todd Ziebarth, the senior vice
president for state advocacy at the
National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.

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Education Week - July 20, 2016

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