The bills now head to Gov. Rick Snyder for his expected signature.
Advertisement
“This work represents a fresh start with more money in the classrooms for Detroit’s students, career stability for Detroit’s teachers, and fiscal accountability for all MI taxpayers”, Snyder said in a statement early Thursday. More than 50 of Detroit’s schools, which serve approximately 46,000 students, were closed because of the protests.
Sen. David Knezek of Dearborn Heights was clear about where he stood: “This plan is a farce”, WDIV quoted him as saying.
“The Senate tried to do good bi-partisan, but we play Charlie Brown to the House’s Lucy”, said Sen.
“There’s mold, there’s rodents, there’s leaks, there’s risky conditions for students in the city of Detroit”, said Crim.
The Michigan Senate is adjourning for the day without enough support for a $617 million bailout of Detroit’s debt-ridden school district. Reports say that the state’s largest school district has grappled for decades with corruption and mismanagement.
Supporters of the commission claim the continued setting up of charter schools without any local control will further undermine public schools, and siphon money from them.
The bill would establish two school districts in Detroit: a new, debtless school district with control of all the old school district’s schools, staff, and resources, and an old shell of a school district to carry the debt.
“It would be probably irresponsible to say that it’s going to be a failure”, says Anderson, “because any help that we can get truly is needed”.
Earlier he told the Detroit Free Press, “Getting consensus around any of these hard ideas is always tough”.
And Hansen choked up during a speech on why he opposed the main bill as it came back from the House.
Anderson also thinks parents need to step up their game and make the new district work, in spite of the deficiencies of the bills. Goeff Hansen, the Hart Republican who sponsored the bill and shepherded them through the chamber and Democrats in the Senate who worked for months on the bi-partisan plan crafted by the Senate, which ended up being dismantled in the House of Representatives.
Advocates of the panel, which was included in the Senate’s initial legislation and is backed by Snyder and some within the GOP, say there needs to be a master body in a city with too many schools in some areas and not enough in others.
“Detroit is such a big part of MI so I feel like anything that happens in Detroit sort of affects the state”, said Cobb.
“If you do this, you are systematically spelling the end of the Detroit Public Schools system”, he said.
The proposed legislation includes a state School Reform Office, which will have some oversight over charter schools.
Debate over the rescue has ignited real passions.
Advertisement
A majority of Republican lawmakers passed the plan early Thursday morning over fierce and unanimous opposition from Democrats, who said that the plan’s failure to more tightly regulate charter schools – and its embrace of uncredentialed teachers in city schools – would fail to stop the Detroit school system’s decline.
