They also questioned why the legislation didn’t include the Detroit Education Commission, an appointed body aimed at stabilizing Detroit’s education landscape that would have some oversight over what schools open in the city.
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The legislature approved $48.7 million in supplemental funding for DPS in March, but Rhodes said the funds would only meet payroll through June.
“People need to realize that teachers are not going to work without being paid”, Lincourt told ABC News Tuesday.
Doty said she’s not sure if she’ll go back to school Wednesday. This past weekend, however, educators within the district were told that as of June 30 they would no longer be paid. The district closed schools where 40 percent or more of the teaching staff called in sick, the spokeswoman said.
About 45,000 Detroit students missed class Monday and Tuesday.
Teachers and some parents are urging MI lawmakers to pass a $715 million education reform package that would fund salaries for July and beyond. The bills next head to the floor of the Republican-led House, which could vote on them later this week. It was unclear how quickly that could occur before the Legislature adjourns for the summer in mid-June.
The committee’s Republican chairman Al Pscholka (pa-SHOLKA) has promised that teachers will be paid and lawmakers will fix the state-managed district’s finances.
Teachers concerned they would not be paid this summer held a second sick-out Tuesday, forcing the closure of 94 schools. “At the very least, teachers must be paid for the work they do”.
The full house will now have to take on this legislation as well as an alternative plan put together by the Senate. The Detroit public school has been borrowing money too much over the years, leading to a $320 million year-end budget deficit, in addition to a $3.5 billion debt in other costs.
The Detroit school system is deep in the red, with more than $500 million of operating debt, the MI governor’s office has said.
Monday’s sick-out-staged as such because it is illegal for teachers to strike under MI law-is the latest in a series of similar actions. For the second day, teachers called out sick – but are insisting this is a lockout and not a sick out. The bailout is less than a $720 million proposal approved by the state Senate in March.
That has forced some parents to skip work or find someone else to watch their children.
Teachers “have been doing the best that they can with the resources that they have”, said Monique Baker McCormick, whose daughter is an 11th-grader at Cass Tech.
She says her daughter is missing out on learning, but that the district’s teachers shouldn’t be blamed for “just trying to survive themselves off of what little they get”.
Ninety-four schools are closed Tuesday because teachers are protesting over the district’s pay roll issues. During the strike, a judge ordered the teachers to return to work after Detroit Public Schools requested an injunction, but teachers mostly stayed off the job.
DFT Interim President Ivy Bailey received a letter with the assurance from Judge Steven Rhodes, the transitional manager for DPS.
Before that, earlier in the year, teachers used the form of protest to call attention to conditions in school buildings they called unworkable.
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The union says DPS administrators, not teachers, are to blame for the mass shutdown.
