NEW START FOR WORST SCHOOLS
STATEWIDE DISTRICT 34 low-performing Detroit schools would be first inSCHOLARSHIP PROMISE Plan calls for DPSgraduates to get free college tuition NOT JUST DETROIT Snyder plan eventually would cover 200 Michigan schools
A plan announced Monday to remake the Detroit Public Schools by transferring the district’s worst-performing schools to a new authority is a model unique to the nation.
It builds on a trend toward independent schools with more control at the individual school level. A new statewide district would be created, similar to the Recovery School District that took over most New Orleans’ public schools after Hurricane Katrina.
The DPS plan, unveiled by Gov. Rick Snyder, includes provisions for fund-raising to provide college scholarships for DPS graduates.
The plan is not a done deal. Some of it might need legislative approval, and details must be worked out, such as how to eliminate DPS’s $327-million debt.
The new district, called the Education Achievement System, would start with DPS schools and then absorb the worst-performing 5% of state public and charter schools, numbering about 200.
The plan would go into effect in 2012-13. Once transferred, schools would operate longer school days. And principals would have wider authority over budgets and hiring.
DPS emergency manager Roy Roberts will continue to run DPS and also be chairman of the new authority. The plan comes amid growing support to recast DPS into a system of independent schools. “I’m telling you, the bullshit’s going away!” Roberts said.
Editorial
Stronger medicine for sick schools
Detroiters inevitably experience a sense of déjà vu whenever elected officials, business leaders, philanthropists and clergymen unveil yet another initiative to save the state’s largest school district — a sense, as state Schools Superintendant Mike Flanagan, a principal in the latest such initiative, acknowledged Monday, that “we have seen this movie before.”So what is different this time? More specifically, what do the plans Gov. Rick Snyder and DPS Emergency Manager Roy Roberts outlined Monday offer to the families that have been leaving DPS like beach dwellers fleeing an approaching tsunami?
In December 2009, long before Snyder won election as governor, the Legislature authorized his office to create a new, statewide school district to which the state’s 200 or so lowest-performing schools could be dispatched, like trauma patients facing imminent death, for intensive care.
Although fewer than a quarter of those failing schools are DPS buildings, Snyder’s decision to make those 39 schools the nucleus of Michigan’s new Educational Achievement System (and his decision to make Roberts its acting CEO) recognizes that DPS is the epicenter of educational failure, not just in Michigan, but nationwide.
Or, as Arne Duncan, President Barack Obama’s secretary of education put it bluntly in a live TV message to those gathered for Snyder’s press conference Monday: “Detroit is, frankly, the bottom of the barrel.”
Snyder and Roberts propose to quarantine Detroit’s sickest schools from the financial and administrative dysfunction that plagues the entire DPS system and exploit Roberts’ powers under Michigan’s supercharged emergency manager statute to impose dramatic change — longer school days and school years, more autonomy for building principals, and the suspension or abolition of any union work rules that Roberts regards as obstacles to his turnaround prescription. Schools assigned to the failing schools district would remain under Roberts’ or his successor’s supervision (and, ultimately, the state’s) for at least five years, at the end of which time those schools demonstrating improved student performance would be allowed to rejoin DPS, remain in the statewide system, or reorganize as independent charter schools. Roberts proposes to support the 80 or so schools that would remain in DPS by giving principals and teachers in those buildings greater autonomy and underwriting a sort of Kalamazoo Promise Light — covering two years of community college or technical training — for students who graduate from any Detroit-based school. Snyder and Roberts say the philanthropic support for the so-called Detroit Promise is already in place, and that they look forward to expanding it to the sort of four-year tuition guarantee high school graduates in Kalamazoo enjoy. Snyder and Roberts say they’ve given themselves until the beginning of the 2012-13 school year to address such fundamental questions as which Detroit schools will be part of the new state system, what curricular guidelines and work rules will prevail there, and how the interests of Detroit taxpayers who’ve authorized bonding for new construction and improvements in the DPS plant will be protected when failing DPS schools join the new state system. Failure to overcome any one of these challenges could, of course, doom the new district and its mission aborning. But DPS has hardly been able to check its disintegration, much less reverse it, using milder medicine. “This is the same thing that General Motors and Chrysler went though,” Roberts told a group of Free Press reporters and editors Monday afternoon. “Fifty years of crap — that’s what we’re fighting.” What Roberts and Snyder are fighting for, both men insist, is not the solvency of a school district but the survival of a city and its young. Whatever legitimate questions Detroiters may have about their strategy and tactics, no one can dispute that that is the right objective.
Roy Roberts, emergency manager for Detroit Public Schools, makes a point about proposed reforms for failing city schools to members of the Detroit Free Press editorial board, education writers and editors Monday.
Statewide district will give more control to each school
TEACHERS, SCHOOL BOARD WAITING TO SEE HOW SNYDER PLAN PLAYS OUT
The new education reforms that officials announced Monday would place more authority with individual schools rather than central-office bureaucrats and create a two-tiered public school system for the city of Detroit— one district operated by the state and Eastern Michigan University, existing alongside a leaner Detroit Public Schools district.
Gov. Rick Snyder, who announced the reforms in a news conference Monday with an assist from the U.S. secretary of education, said officials studied what happened in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, where schools were placed into a special district.
Under Snyder’s plan, a new statewide district called the Education Achievement System will be formed to take control of the worst-performing 5% of Michigan schools, or about 200 schools. The 2011-12 school year will be a planning year, and the new district would start in 2012-13 by taking over the worst-performing DPS schools first. As of Monday, 34 DPS schools — 14 of them high schools — were eligible to be placed under the control of the statewide EAS. The principals at the remaining 80 or so DPS buildings also will be given more control over their budgets and hiring through what is commonly known as site-based management. Roy Roberts, the DPS emergency manager, will continue to run DPS and will be chairman of the EAS, Snyder said. U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan joined Snyder, state Superintendent Michael Flanagan and Roberts in a news conference via an Internet teleconference at Renaissance High on Monday. Duncan, who has called DPS arguably the worst urban district in the nation, called the plan courageous. “We’re fighting to save the city of Detroit,” Duncan said. “By virtually every measure, Detroit is at the bottom of the barrel. … Five years from now, there’s no reason Detroit shouldn’t be leading the country.” The federal government is asking districts across the nation to focus on the bottom 5% of schools, he said. All facilities — including any new construction — that are placed under the control of the EAS will remain property of DPS, Roberts said. The DPS teachers’ contract will remain intact, and teachers should be recalled before July 29, said Keith Johnson, president of the Detroit Federation of Teachers. (All DPS employees were laid off as of July 29.) The teachers’ contract expires in June 2012. Roberts, by law, could cancel or modify union contracts, but so far has said he has no plans to do so. The 11-member DPS school board will continue to exist, but it has no authority under the emergency manager law that the state Legislature passed this year. Seven board members are up for re-election this year, but a majority have not filed to run again. How it will work The EAS will be governed by an Educational Achievement Authority that will be established through an agreement between Eastern Michigan and DPS, according to a statement released by Snyder’s office. The authority will be an independent, free-standing entity. The EAS schools will offer a longer school day, as well as access to the arts, music and physical education, according to a statement released by Snyder’s office. Businesses and nonprofit organizations, including the California-based Broad Foundation, which has $2 billion in assets and paid a portion of the former DPS emergency financial manager’s living expenses, have said they are interested in providing support for the reform effort. DPS, EMU and the governor will appoint 11 board members to oversee the EAS as well as an executive committee that will select a chancellor to run the system. A parent advisory council will be formed at each school. After five years, if a school has made adequate progress, it can return to DPS — or its original district; remain within the EAS, or become a charter school. Labor contracts for employees under the EAS will be negotiated by the chairperson, who initially will be Roberts. The new district will have more money for classroom instruction because it will not be saddled with any of the DPS deficit. Also, DPS currently spends about 55% of its funds in the classroom, with the rest going to administration and debt repayment. The EAS would seek to spend 95% of all funds on classroom instruction. The plan is not a done deal and many details are yet to be hammered out, officials said. In 2009, the state Legislature passed an education reform law that would allow for the formation of an office that would oversee the worst-performing schools. However, Snyder’s office is working with legislators, especially state Sen. Phil Pavlov, a Republican from St. Clair, to create legislation that would make the EAS and the partnership between DPS and EMU legally binding, according to Snyder’s office. The plan is separate from other action plans under way to restructure education in the city. Excellent Schools Detroit could be tapped to coordinate fund-raising for the EAS, according to the details released Monday. Excellent Schools Detroit is a coalition of local leaders that plans to raise $200 million to open 70 high-performing schools for Detroit students by 2020. Carol Goss, a leader of Excellent Schools Detroit, said at some point its leaders and state officials will have to meet to determine the best way to move forward without replicating services. Also, the DPS Renaissance 2012 plan and deficit-elimination plan that call for closing or chartering up to half of the district’s 141 schools by 2012 will continue, depending on the financial outlook. The DPS budget is due June 30. A public meeting on the budget will be postponed from Thursday to Monday. As part of the plan, the $327-million DPS deficit would be eradicated by refinancing much of that debt and paying it off in five years, Roberts said. He did not say that any entity planned on writing a check to help pay off the debt, but added, “If they do, I’ll take it.” A fund-raising effort will focus on finding enough money to ensure that all DPS graduates would have a scholarship to cover costs at two-year colleges or for two years of post-secondary training. The ultimate goal is to provide four-year scholarships similar to those offered by the Kalamazoo Promise, which has provided more than $17 million in scholarships to students in that city. School board reacts Six DPS board members met with Roberts in two separate meetings early Monday morning to hear about the reform plan. Board member LaMar Lemmons III, the board’s finance committee chairman, said Roberts lost his cool and let go a few expletives during the first meeting. Roberts told board members that $200 million of the district’s deficit would go away and the books will be balanced in five years under the plan. Board President Anthony Adams said the board favored some of the ideas that Roberts told them about, such as plans to rebid some DPS contracts and the plan to give students scholarships. But board members would not go so far as to say they support the new reforms. “We don’t have a lot of information,” Adams said. Monday’s announcement at Renaissance High was invitation-only. Several teachers were not allowed to enter and at least two people were escorted from the building by police. “This system is broken, and I can’t fix it, and you can’t fix it,” Roberts told dozens of stakeholders allowed to attend Monday’s announcement. The announcement comes after two years of wrangling and proposals over how to restructure DPS to eliminate the deficit and improve the 62% graduation rate and national test scores that rank at the bottom compared with those of students in17 other cities. DPS has been under two forms of state takeover in recent years — one from 1999 to 2006 and another from 2009 to present. Sharlonda Buckman, executive director for the Detroit Parent Network, said she was pleased that the EAS plan is a statewide proposal. “It’s not just about Detroit.” • CONTACT CHASTITY PRATT DAWSEY: 313-223-4537 OR CPRATT@FREEPRESS.COM
Roy Roberts, Detroit Public Schools emergency manager, explains some of the details of a dramatic educational restructuring proposal during a news conference held Monday morning at Renaissance High School in Detroit.
Behind the scenes
How Snyder’s spark of an idea grew into this plan
The proposition made over steaks during a dinner was simple, yet complex. Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder wanted to make bold changes in Detroit Public Schools, but needed help. Would Eastern Michigan University be interested? That May 16 dinner at the Chop House in Ann Arbor marked the explosion of activity leading to Monday’s announcement of the establishment of a new statewide authority to run Michigan’s failing schools, likely starting with 34 Detroit public schools. Snyder chose EMU based on its history of teacher education efforts, personal relationships with Snyder and DPS, and Lansing connections, people involved in or familiar with the discussions said. There are still details to be worked out, and some of Snyder’s sweeping plan might need legislative approval. In order to form the new authority, Snyder needs to use the Urban Cooperation Act of 1967, which requires that another governmental agency be involved in the plan. In stepped EMU, which has one of the oldest teacher education schools in the country and has trained a significant number of Michigan’s public school teachers. Snyder’s proposed authority — called the Education Achievement Agency — would be a joint effort between DPS and EMU but be its own free-standing public policy entity. EMU’s Board of Regents will be asked today to approve the 27-page agreement. The first spark for the idea goes back to when Snyder was running for governor. During his discussions with various education leaders, the concept of creating a new system of schools to try to reform the worst performers was discussed and then more fully developed once he took office. About the time Roy Roberts was named emergency manager on May 4, Snyder asked whether Roberts wanted to go down this road. Roberts agreed to it. And that fast-tracked the work. At the May 16 meeting, representatives from EMU met with state Superintendent Mike Flanagan and representatives from Snyder’s office and the Broad Foundation, which is run by philanthropist Eli Broad and focuses on education reform. Broad had been meeting with Snyder about education issues. In the days following that May dinner, EMU regents who were involved in the meeting — Jim Stapleton, Roy Wilbanks and Mike Hawks — got President Susan Martin involved, along with attorneys. There were meetings with Roberts and his attorneys. “It’s an aggressive plan, and it needs to be,” said EMU Regent Jim Stapleton, the chair of the university’s finance committee. “From our perspective, given our long-standing reputation as a teachers college, we were the perfect partner. “And it’s not lost on us the benefit of having a presence in high schools across the state can have on our enrollment goals.” Stapleton knows Roberts, and Hawks is a prominent Lansing lobbyist. “We like EMU,” Roberts said. “We signed up to (get) this done together.” Throughout June, meetings were held, hammering out the details of the agreement. On each side, there were questions about money, legal protection, length of the contract and a million other details. The resulting agreement is a contract between DPS and EMU for 15 years. It spells out who will be on the authority — two people from EMU, two from DPS and seven appointed by the governor. It spells out the members of an executive committee to be led by Roberts. It makes the authority subject to Freedom of Information Act and Open Meetings Act laws. It mandates that no member of the authority committee or executive committee be paid for his or her work. On Friday, attorneys spent the day in Lansing hammering out the final details. On Sunday, Roberts briefed teachers union officials. Then, on Monday morning, he briefed Detroit school board officials, and shortly thereafter, stood in front of the news media and invited guests to spell out the plan. “Today, we change the game,” he said. • CONTACT DAVID JESSE: 313-222-8851 OR DJESSE@FREEPRESS.COM
Detroit Public Schools emergency manager Roy Roberts talks about restructuring the district. His receptiveness to the concept of creating a new system of schools to try to help the ones struggling most helped fast-track the plan. There are still details to be worked out, and some of Gov. Rick Snyder’s proposal might need approval from lawmakers.
What they said
Here’s what decision-makers and stakeholders had to say about a plan announced Monday to create a special authority that could control 34 of the lowest-performing Detroit public schools and raise money to provide college scholarships for DPS graduates. “We’re not fighting just to save children or to save the public school system, we’re fighting to save the city of Detroit. … Everybody has to own this process.” U.S. Education Secretary ARNE DUNCAN “The time is now to establish a permanent solution and to provide teachers in our most challenged schools and students of all backgrounds with the tools, resources and safe learning environments they need to flourish.” Gov. RICK SNYDER “As state superintendent, it’s one thing to say take over those 200 schools. The question in my mind for the last year has been, ‘And then what?’ This is the what. ... This time we have to get it right.” MICHAEL FLANAGAN, state superintendent “The devil’s in the details. … Our contract will remain intact, but it expires in June 2012.” KEITH JOHNSON, president of the Detroit Federation of Teachers “Eastern Michigan University is ready to roll up its sleeves and commit to this initiative and deliver its expertise in support of improved learning environments and student achievement for all students, including those who are educationally disadvantaged students. Our kids and our state will be better off because of it.” ROY WILBANKS, chairman of the EMU Board of Regents “More questions than answers remain at this point, not the least of which include … what will happen to the collective bargaining rights of employees. … We are ready to roll up our sleeves and work with Detroit Public Schools emergency manager Roy Roberts and community groups. … We are not prepared to be treated as bystanders.” Joint statement from KEITH JOHNSON, president, Detroit Federation of Teachers; RUBY NEWBOLD, president, Detroit Association of Educational Office Employees, and DONNA JACKSON, president, Detroit Federation of Paraprofessionals
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