Teachers Who Staged ‘Sick-Outs’ Declare Victory
Against Detroit Schools’ Unelected Emergency Manager
Education activists cheered today as Darnell Earley officially stepped down from his position as emergency manager of Detroit Public Schools (DPS). His departure came after thousands of teachers staged rolling “sick-outs” to protest his role as the unelected head of the school system.
Strikes by teachers and other municipal employees are illegal under Michigan law, but more than a dozen times this winter, groups of teachers called in sick to protest frozen wages, ballooning class sizes, decaying buildings and other conditions they say are the result of state-imposed austerity. The largest such action on January 20 forced the temporary closure of 88 of the district’s 104 schools. Photos shared by teachers of the hazardous conditions inside their classrooms—black mold, rodents and no heat—went viral.
Earley has an ignominious resume: Before he began managing DPS in January 2015, he was the emergency manager of Flint, Michigan when the city infamously switched water supplies, eventually exposing its residents to lead-contaminated water. Teachers say that Earley’s reign in Detroit, likewise, made a bad situation worse. The Detroit Federation of Teachers (DTF), which did not coordinate the sickouts but filed suit against Earley and DPS in February, accused him of allowing the schools to “deteriorate to the point of crisis.” Earley’s departure is a victory for the union and rank-and-file activists who organized the sickouts, but some are adamant that the work is not done until local control is returned to Detroit’s schools.
Sick with ‘Snyder Flu’
The larger problem, many teachers say, is the string of unelected emergency managers that have presided over Detroit schools for the past seven years. Following decades of structural disinvestment, the city’s school system is in an estimated $30 billion in debt. The teacher’s union says that a series of four emergency managers have only dug that hole deeper, running up $515 million in debt while implementing mass layoffs and cuts on the backs of educators and students. Governor Rick Snyder has relied heavily on emergency managers to fix the state’s fiscal woes, but critics say that the system effectively disenfranchises the majority-black communities that have ended up under the thumb of appointed leaders.
Under emergency management, Detroit’s elected school board is effectively powerless. Teachers say this situation forced them to take dramatic action. “Having none of the usual forms of democracy, like having no school board meetings to go to where we can voice our
