Dive Brief:
- Fiscally strained Detroit Public Schools will close 24 schools in the next four years and reduce teacher pay by 10% starting in October, under a revised plan approved by Emergency Manager Jack Martin.
- The plan was filed with the Michigan Department of Education on Wednesday and must be approved by state Superintendent Mike Flanagan.
- According to DPS officials, the necessity to cut costs comes after voters shot down a countywide tax millage on Aug. 5.
Dive Insight:
DPS currently has a $127 million deficit, and according to the 75-page proposal, the new plan could get this number down to $121 million for the next school year. Looking specifically at the plan, it is important to note that the 10% pay decrease is on top of a 2011 10% wage cut issued by DPS's former emergency financial manager, Roy Roberts. Michigan’s Public Act 436 says the EFM can issue pay cuts without union negotiations. For many, like Detroit Federation of Teachers President Keith Johnson, the news is not necessarily surprising, but an indication of the EFM's failings. "Once again, because of their inability to manage their finances, they want to shift the burden onto employees,” Johnson told the Detroit News. “We have taken all the cuts we are going to take.”
In June, Martin and DPS Chief Financial Officer William Aldridge announced plans to add five more students to each DPS classroom in grades 4-12. It is unclear if this will still happen or not since the financial plan that this was explained in was rejected by the state. The Michigan Department of Education said it could not accept the proposal because it needed, "realistic projections of revenues, expenses and fund balances." Specifically, the state wanted to know what DPS planned to do if the tax millage was rejected, which happened. One would hope overcrowded classrooms (the average will not be 30 students) and underpaid teachers will not have to mingle.
While the actual class sizes are going up, the student population is going down (due to school closings). Ironically one reason the district has less students is because over 10,000 of them were taken from DPS and placed into the state-mandated Education Achievement Authority. This move to create a district for the lowest-performing schools is not only controversial but has created additional financial burdens for DPS as its total per-pupil funding has gone down.
While DPS's elected board definitely had its own issues, all of this chaos definitely has critics wondering what is the end goal for the district. Some would argue this almost looks like a pre-planned decision to run the district into the ground and ultimately turn the city into a New Orleans situation where no traditional public school system exists — only charter schools.