Rife with scandal, Detroit’s state-run school district to fold as privatization schemes continue
The Eastern Michigan University (EMU) Board of Regents voted on February 5 to sever its agreement with the scandal-ridden Educational Achievement Authority (EAA).
The EAA, promoted and partially funded by the pro-charter Broad Foundation, marked a major step in the growing attack on public education in Michigan. Its record of lucrative no-bid contracts, outright bribery and FBI indictments—while miserably failing the most vulnerable children—made it a notorious symbol of the avarice behind the drive for school privatization.
This decision would end the partnership between the state university and the Detroit Public Schools (DPS), under which the EAA has operated, effectively pulling the plug on the district by the end of the 2016-17 school year. The EAA’s 15 “failing schools” had been separated from the Detroit Public Schools in 2012 and were constituted as a state-run “turnaround” school district.
While the EAA will be abolished, the political establishment in Michigan, Democrat and Republican, is pressing forward in its drive to dismantle public education.
The future of the EAA schools has been one of the hotly disputed issues in the ongoing negotiations over the restructuring of DPS. Detroit Democrats and union officials associated with the Coalition for the Future of Detroit Schoolchildren and Detroit Federation of Teachers (DFT) leaders have urged that the EAA schools be returned to the DPS district.
The EMU vote, however, is purely symbolic. Pending legislation, based on Michigan Governor Rick Snyder’s plan to dissolve the DPS and establish the Detroit Community Schools, already made provisions to reabsorb the EAA schools. With Detroit schools facing the possibility of running out of cash by April, legislators are expected to come up with a compromise by the end of the current school year.
Mike Morris, chair of the EMU Board of Regents, acknowledged as much, explaining the board’s decision: “It is increasingly clear that the anticipated legislation in Lansing to formally address this matter, and end the EAA, is now moving forward… June 30, 2017 will mark the University’s official withdrawal. Given the legislative efforts under way, we fully expect the EAA to cease to exist well before that time.”
The Board of Regents had for several years reauthorized the EAA arrangement despite vocal protests from the university’s Education Department faculty and students, even as the EAA’s incompetence, graft and fraud were uncovered.
While the EAA itself will not be directly transitioned into charter schools, as pro-privatization state legislators originally hoped, a mechanism is being established for systematic closures of “failing” public schools, first in Detroit and then across the state.
Under the pending legislation, the state mandate for “turnaround schools” under the State School Reform/Redesign District (SSRRD) will be not only maintained but strengthened. Snyder recently moved the SSRRD as an Rife with scandal, Detroit’s state-run school district to fold as privatization schemes continue - World Socialist Web Site:
