On Tuesday, the district closed 94 of its 97 schools – the same number of schools that canceled classes on Monday, when more than 1,500 teachers did not show up for work.
Advertisement
While $33 million was included for transition costs, the district’s emergency manager retired bankruptcy Judge Steven Rhodes said the need is closer to $50 million. Without a deal, teachers who chose to get paid through the summer will not receive money they are owed for work they did before the 30 June deadline. The same unchecked emergency management through which Gov. Rick Snyder poisoned the drinking water of Flint’s children has run like a wrecking ball through Detroit’s educational landscape, closing down 200 schools, chasing over 100,000 students from the district, and unconscionably widening the gap between the educational experiences of Detroit’s children and those in most other parts of MI. “That’s adding insult to injury”, Bailey said in a statement.
It was not immediately known how many of Detroit Public School’s approximately 46,000 students were affected by the continuing sick-out, but the district said more than 45,000 missed class Monday. “And since we have not gotten the guarantee that members will be paid”.
The Michigan House of Representatives is debating the approval of a $715-million education reform package to help keep the district afloat. Students also lose the meals they get at school.
It hasn’t been made clear how the district will pay wages it had previously said it couldn’t.
Other cities that have rebranded their public school districts – for example New Orleans with its Recovery School District – have been quick to push in favor of privatization (New Orleans is now the first fully charter school district in the United States). Lacking funding for public education is yet another, very obvious, attack on the children of Michigan-Detroit has far and away the largest school system in Michigan. The state Senate approved it in March.
In Detroit, where the economy has been struggling for years, schools are now under a state of financial emergency and are run by an emergency manager instead of a school board and superintendent. On Monday, he said he understood teachers’ frustrations, but thought the sickout was “unnecessary”.
Teachers rallied Tuesday as they did Monday, when hundreds gathered outside a school administration building.
“The teachers feel, and I feel, that no one is listening to us”, Bailey said.
The union said the threat of payless paydays would have especially hurt teachers whose pay is spread over 26 weeks of year, roughly two-thirds of the city’s 3,800 teachers, according to DFT.
“I am on record as saying that I can not in good conscience ask anyone to work without pay”, said Rhodes.
If not school, where do kids go?
“This is one of the most tumultuous school years our kids have experienced”, she told CNN. “They aren’t getting what they need. That wasn’t your money”, said Rodgers, echoing calls for an audit of the district’s finances.
Advertisement
It’s also a challenge for parents such as Kinsey, who works from home but has had to interrupt work three or four times to cajole his sons to do schoolwork. His 11th grader needs to prepare for the SAT, he said. “So I don’t blame them at all for fighting for what they deserve”. “They think this is a vacation”.
