“The reports of my demise are greatly overblown”, Snyder said.
Advertisement
The housing agency says the remaining $11.7 million in blight funds will be given to other communities through an application process.
The House and Senate have passed different restructuring plans and are trying to resolve their differences before a summer adjournment in two weeks. The original House plan provided $33 million.
“House Republicans are playing games with the Detroit Public Schools, and the children of Detroit are the ones who will lose”, House Democratic Leader Tim Greimel said.
The measure now advances to the Senate, where a spokeswoman for GOP Majority Leader Arlan Meekhof calls the bills a “realistic compromise”. The Snyder administration and legislators also are negotiating how much to spend transitioning to the new district.
Snyder said the differences over the restructuring legislation are largely over a proposed commission that would regulate the opening and closing of schools – including charters.
In May 2016, 52 percent of polled MI voters said they disapproved of Snyder’s performance during his five years in office, and 40 percent said they approved, according to a new poll that was exclusively released to the Detroit News and WDIV-TV.
“People should be deadly afraid of bankruptcy”, he said, noting it will cost the state far more money than the $617 million the House is considering for the district, which has been under the control of a state-appointed emergency manager since 2009. He said academic proficiency is abysmal in both DPS schools and charters.
“House Republicans are catering to their wealthy and well-connected donors like the DeVos family that want to protect charter schools from any form of accountability”.
Charter advocate Dan Quisenberry, president of the Michigan Association of Public School Academies, said he had not seen the bill language to understand exactly how the advisory panel would work but was open to the concept.
“We’ve always been after solutions”, he said.
Advertisement
“When I look at the upcoming election in November, my biggest issue is hopefully re-electing the House, because I think that’s important”, Snyder said. Duggan is a major supporter of the commission, suggesting this week that Detroit Public Schools would fail without it. Thursday’s legislation comes less than a month before DPS was expected to run out of money to pay employees.
