A major sick-out shut down most of Detroit’s schools Wednesday as teachers tried to call attention to the city’s public school problems.
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Teachers from Detroit schools protest outside Cobo Center before President Barack Obama’s visit to the auto show on Wednesday.
“Due to a high volume of teacher absences, the following schools will be closed today”, the DPS wrote on its website before listing the majority of its schools.
Ivy Bailey, interim president of the Detroit Federation of Teachers, said the latest sick-out is the result “of the lack of respect that has been displayed toward teachers in this district, hazardous working conditions, oversize classes” and other factors.
Disgruntled Detroit educators have stepped up efforts to protest Gov. Rick Snyder’s plans for the district, its ramshackle finances, their low pay, dilapidated buildings and overcrowded classrooms. In 2009, the first unelected emergency manager, Robert Bobb, was appointed to run the city’s schools, which were burdened by a $259 million budget deficit and declining enrollment.
Detroit teachers and education advocates involved with the mass call-out said the demonstration was meant to shed light on the quality of public education in the city.
At least 88 out of Detroit’s 100 schools were closed after teachers staged a sickout, the largest in a series of protests that aim to bring light to issues the school system faces.
“DPS has requested the court’s intervention in addressing the ongoing teacher sick outs that are plaguing the district”, spokeswoman Michelle Zdrodowski said in a statement, adding: “There will be no further comment until we receive direction from the court”.
The fact that the sickout has closed so many schools – so many, in fact, that the district’s Facebook page announced the handful of schools that were open – points to a compelling beef. The district, which oversees schools in the bottom 5 percent of schools statewide, now includes 15 schools in Detroit. “It would be so much more productive to actually do something to fix Detroit schools rather than file restraining orders against those who expose the miserable conditions”.
We reached out to a representative for Detroit schools and will update this post if we hear back. “[Earley] poisoned children in flint with the water, and [he poisons] children in Detroit with inadequate school buildings”. Darnell Earley called the sick-out “a publicity stunt” and said “sooner or later, the families who have been so adversely affected by these sick-outs will express their displeasure and voice their disdain of these actions”. The district’s emergency manager has filed for a temporary injunction to keep teachers in the classroom.
More than 60 schools were forced to close on January 11 because after teachers organized to take unauthorized sick days, with smaller sickouts also occurring at other times.
Though Snyder did not directly address poor conditions in public schools in Detroit, Duggan spoke on the subject last week.
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It is unclear how long Flint’s water crisis will last, as the city’s entire water system may be contaminated.
