A letter to DPS staff

                

                

 *I don't have a lot of confidence that this memo was distributed as it should have been. So far it's been a real tug-of-war between me and EM Roy Roberts getting him to acknowledge and accept my role in the administration. Anyway, for those of you who would like to know, here is the letter that should have been distributed to all DPS staff from me last week.

                 DETROIT PUBLIC SCHOOLS

                                   Office of the

          SUPERINTENDENT OF ACADEMICS

To: All DPS Staff

From: Dr. John Telford, Superintendent/Academics

Date: August 23, 2012

Subject: General Announcement

As school is about to open, it has been no secret that the Emergency Financial Manager on one side and the duly elected and recently re-empowered Board of Education and the Superintendent on the other have been frequently entangled in lavishly publicized legal and political wrangling over which one of us—Roy  Roberts as EFM, or I as Superintendent of Academics—has authority  over which DPS departments.  These disagreements have now even extended again to whether the two of us have joint administrative authority over all physical facilities—specifically including school buildings.  Wayne County Circuit Court Judge John Murphy has put me in charge of all things academic, and he has put Mr. Roberts in charge of all things financial.  The Judge ordered me and Mr. Roberts to collaborate and administer Detroit Public Schools in the best interest of our students, and this is exactly what I for my part have been trying very hard to do, and this is what I intend to continue to do.  I expect all schools to open on time and to open appropriately staffed, and I expect the Division of Instruction’s academic plan will be followed to the letter in all classrooms.   

Accordingly, all of the following will be promptly forwarded to Judge John Murphy for his review and approval: In compliance with the Hon. John Murphy’s ruling, it must now remain my legal (as well as logical) expectation that all academic administrative personnel are to report exclusively to me.  These personnel specifically include Dr. Karen Ridgeway, Mr. Doug Ross, and any and all academic administrators over whom they have direct or indirect oversight.  Thus, the staff who occupy the cited positions include all of the assistant superintendents, principals, assistant principals, subject-area coordinators and supervisors, the district athletic director, security and attendance staff, parent/community liaison, etc.  The Board of Education has now directed me to inform all DPS staff that either the Board members or I will be the only individuals to correspond and interact with the Emergency Financial Manager (with the exception of staff whose job descriptions are clearly financial).  The Board and I are the exclusive conduit between the office of Emergency Financial Manager and all instructional or instruction-related personnel.  Some departments—to include but not to be limited to H-R, Communications, General Counsel, Facilities, and IT—will have dual reportage to the EFM and to me.  However, it is noted here that all employees should feel free to contact the office of the Inspector General if they observe any waste, fraud, or abuse within the district. 

Let me emphasize that we do not wish to distract the Emergency Financial Manager from his foremost role and responsibility of rectifying the financial emergency.  I trust that Mr. Roberts is continuing to work very hard to eliminate the deficit, and I have begun to work just as hard administrating the academic side of the house.  I intend to meet with every principal and be in every DPS school within the months to come.  Let us put any and all of our differences aside and join hands now in total unity to ensure the successful opening of school on September 4, and let us all continue to focus entirely upon offering the very best education to our children.           

Contrary to critics' perceptions, Detroit School Board not the problem

   

When I read Detroit Free Press Editorial Page Editor Stephen Henderson's extremely misguided attack on me and the Detroit School Board, School Board President Lamar Lemmons and I didn't have much choice but to respond and quick. The text of our letter to the editor is below. If you want to see the Aug. 17, 2012 published version, click here.

While it is difficult for me to overemphasize how far off base Mr. Henderson's comments were, I nevertheless appreciate the willingness of the Free Press to publish our response in a relatively timely manner.

To the Editor:

We read with extreme interest the Detroit Free Press’ August 10 editorial “AG’s school board suit misguided.”  We agree with its statement that Attorney General Bill Schuette should desist from now trying to disenfranchise Detroit voters retroactively by manufacturing a possible path to nullify the Supreme Court’s decision to place the challenge to PA 4 on the November ballot.  This unconstitutional law has disenfranchised every Michigan citizen.   However, we disagree with the editorial’s assertion that Detroit’s interim superintendent and school board are wrong to establish a curriculum that is antidotal to so-called “Ebonics” and other “non-standard” dialectical and syntactical speech patterns.  Like it or not, standard English is the language of the marketplace.  (See A Life on the RUN—Seeking and Safeguarding Social Justice, Harmonie Park Press, 2010, and the published writings of WSU professor Geneva Smitherman and the distinguished Nigeria-born linguist James Ogbu.) 

Further, your editorial itself was misguided in implying that the newly-elected and up-until-now disempowered DPS board is “bad.”  Like the current board, other various DPS boards have also been virtually without power, and this has been the case for eleven of the past thirteen years.  When the state took over DPS in 1999, the district had a $93 million surplus.  DPS test scores most certainly are now in need of vast improvement, but in 1999, the district was scoring near the state midpoint.  No other district at or below the midpoint was taken over, so why us?  PA 10 placed DPS in an ill-fated “reform” experiment that by 2006 had turned the surplus into a $250 million deficit.  Test scores plummeted.  The dropout rate escalated.  At that point, DPS was returned to local governance.  A newly-elected and thus inexperienced board inherited personnel and policies left to them by the agents of the state.  When that board couldn’t return the district to positive footing, the state once again intervened due to the deficit that the state itself had created.  

  Enter EM Robert Bobb, who sold off millions of dollars-worth of DPS assets and increased the deficit to $350 million via reckless spending and blatant cronyism (see white paper by Library Commissioner Russ Bellant).  Then came EM Roy Roberts, who as an agent of the state incidentally authorized and even boasted openly about financing the school board election, which the city clerk and the bureau of elections duly and legally conducted with absolutely zero interference from an attorney general who now wishes to challenge it for clearly partisan political motives.  Mr. Roberts has systematically dismantled DPS by jettisoning our students into charter schools and illegally handing over fifteen of our schools to the bogus state “Educational Achievement” Authority (EAA) which, in a clear conflict of interest, he simultaneously chairs, thus forcing us into court to seek judicial rectification and justice for Detroit’s schoolchildren.