Losses Upon Losses, Failures Upon Failures

This is the third and final post regarding the grand failure of democracy caused by Michigan's Emergency Manager Law. If you haven't already, I highly recommend reading my first and second posts before proceeding.

Michigan State Senator David Knezek

Mr. Herman Davis, DPS President

So far, we've barely touched on one of the worst crises caused by the state overruling locally elected officials: the sabotage of the Detroit Public School System (DPS). A couple of weeks ago, I spoke with Mr. Herman Davis, the President of the Detroit Public School Board of Education, to discuss the history and future of DPS, its students and families, and its relationship with the State. I also connected with State Senator David Knezek to discuss DPS' options moving forward.

In 1999 DPS' student enrollment was still on the rise, it had maintained a $93 million budget surplus, and $1.2 billion in a 1994 voter-approved bond. Then Governor John Engler instituted a state-takeover of the district, citing financial mismanagement as the reason. That takeover resulted in a state-appointed reform board that did not answer to the voters. The Governor and State Legislature took a step that created conflict between the democratic will of the people and the will of their representatives, highlighting that democracy and representation don't always walk hand-in-hand with one another. This is a point discussed heavily in Hanna Pitkin's article Representation and Democracy: An Uneasy Alliance, though our State complicated things further by having democratically elected representatives take away the power of other democratically elected Representatives.

In November of 2004, by a margin of 2-1, Detroiters voted to have the reform board disbanded and an elected board installed. A year later, the voters chose their new board members during the 2005 general election. As the board took office in January of 2006, "one of the first orders of business was figuring out how to recover from the actions of the reform board, which had taken a $100 million surplus and turned it into a $200 million deficit." (Detroit Metro Times)

EM Robert Bobb

Within three years, with revenues and enrollment declining, the state would intervene again. This time, Governor Jennifer Granholm, invoked Public Act 72 (1990) to declare a financial emergency in the district and install Robert Bobb as Emergency Manager. Bobb was an interesting choice, given that he was being paid hundreds of thousands of dollars by the Broad Foundation, a leading promoter of school privatization nationwide, throughout his term. Bobb retained his job through early 2011, despite successfully being sue
d by the elected board over his unilateral changes to school curricula.

A month before Bobb's departure, Public Act 4 (2011) comes into force, granting him expanded powers as EM, which he uses to issue every one of the 5,466 teachers in the district a layoff notice in order to shuffle positions without seniority considerations. During his time in office, DPS shuts down over 80 schools, and the annual budget deficit grows to $686.5 million. According to Davis, the new law "reduced community control, eliminated democracy, and destroyed our public education in Detroit. The EM removed wraparound programs that enriched a child's performance and allowed them to compete in the arts, music, athletics, and sports." He continued, saying that the expanded powers under PA 4 (2011) made the EM "the dictator, allowing him to do the same things he did in Flint. The community had no voice, we had no voice. That is dictatorship, and we can't have that in America." As a "dictator" the EM would fall into the category of a "veto player" according to Stepan and Linz, who argue that majority-constraining aspects like veto players in a democracy perpetuate inequality in their article Comparative Perspectives on Inequality and Quality of Democracy in the United States.

Without missing a step, Governor Snyder appoints DPS' second EM, Former General Motors Executive Roy Roberts, under the reconstituted Emergency Manager law- Public Act 436 (2012). In the year Roberts is in office, the net deficit hits $700 million despite exceptional budget cuts throughout the district. His successor, Jack Martin also fails to control the rising deficit, with the number ballooning to $763.7 million by his departure. Combined, both Roberts and Martin shut down over 25 schools, charterize six others, and place fifteen in Governor Snyder's Education Achievement Authority (EAA). The remaining schools have their renovation and infrastructure upkeep budgets slashed in order to attempt maintaining financial solvency for the district.

The purpose of the EAA is to provide for the turnaround of failing schools, though it has failed to do so to this day. Davis believes that the EAA was a terrible mistake that "should've never happened", and maintained that EAA has not done its job. Under the Authority's control, schools were "a nightmare", Davis said. "Kids are not learning, and the Teach For America teachers with no classroom or regional experience made it worse." 

Senator Knezek concurred with Davis, saying "The EAA, which I believe was an unproven experiment on Detroit's children, needs to go away. We need to provide a pathway for these schools, students, and teachers to return to DPS. It's unconscionable to suggest that students would be better off without local schools and local control. It's frustrating to know that despite the numerous documented cases of failed emergency management, the State of Michigan has yet to return DPS to local control"

Soon after his departure as the Emergency Manager of the City of Flint, Darnell Earley is appointed as DPS' fourth and supposedly final Emergency Manager. Davis described his professional interactions with EM Earley as less than pleasant, saying, "working with Mr. Earley was not productive, because he shared Governor Snyder's opinion on destroying the education system in Detroit. He didn't care about parents, kids were harmed and he didn't care, just like in Flint. People were harmed, kids were killed, and he didn't care." Under Earley's leadership, DPS faces a series of "sick outs", with teachers calling in sick all at once to shut buildings down. The teacher protest is centered on "deteriorating conditions inside the schools, health concerns like black mold, and giant ceiling leaks," Davis said.

A concise history of DPS and State control

By Earley's resignation on February 29th, 2016, the deficit had risen to $782.1 million, with long term debt estimated at $3.5 billion. Senator Knezek makes the point that he believes "the State of Michigan is responsible for the debt accrued by DPS while under emergency management. Finding a sustainable funding source that doesn't adversely affect the School Aid Fund is critical because we should not pay off the debt on the backs of other students across the state."

Late last week, with the DPS Board of Education's frustration at a height, the district filed two lawsuits in federal court against the State of Michigan, the Governor, and EM Earley, challenging the Emergency Manager law. Davis said his hope is that "the court steps to its duty and declares the law unconstitutional. The harm has been done by these foundations, like Broad, using state governments to privatize education across the country. The voices of the people have been stolen, and we've got to stop it. We've seen it in New Jersey, Highland Park, and minority districts here in Michigan. Enough is enough. They do it to the districts who don't have the money to fight them in court." John Stuart Mill would likely agree with Mr. Davis, mainly because he argues that "it is important that every one of the governed should have a voice in the government" (Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform), and since the voices of the governed have been stolen, the government should return them.

In my first two posts, we drew out the first two steps necessary to restore democracy to our State, and prevent such a failure from ever occurring again. Firstly, Public Act 436 (2012) must be repealed (or struck down as unconstitutional), and veto referendums need to be structurally strengthened so they aren't affected on the whim of a simple majority of the state House and Senate. Secondly, the State must be prevented from overruling the will of the people, and the procedural measures used by the legislature to subvert it in the first place must be outlawed.

Now we add the third, and final, step: accountability. Ironically, the one thing that the EM law removed will be the final nail in its coffin. The failures of the newly revamped Emergency Manager law are clear. Beyond the laws' repeal or removal, however, their champions must be held to account. The inhumane conditions of DPS schools are a direct result of slashed budgets, all in failed attempts to control a runaway deficit. The poisoning of the City of Flint, as one of my peers describes, and the deaths of children that resulted from it, were a direct result of slashed budgets, all in a failed attempt to control that runaway deficit. 

Michigan Governor Rick Snyder

These conditions were a result of conscious decisions made by Governor Snyder and his appointees, and they must answer for them. When I asked Mr. Davis about accountability, he responded in a way that seemed as if he had read my mind: "The Governor needs to resign, and if he doesn't, he should be recalled; impeached even. These actions were criminal, and the Justice Department should have indicted him by now. The Governor and Mr. Earley. Kids died in Flint, and irreparable damage was done to students in DPS. They need to go to jail."