Give DPS leadership its chance to fix district

John Telford: Give DPS leadership its chance to fix district

January 12, 2013  |  

 

John Telford

By John Telford

Detroit Free Press guest writer

When the state took over Detroit Public Schools in 1999, the school district had a $93-million surplus and test scores that were improving. No other school district was taken over except DPS in 1999, so why us?

Unfortunately for DPS at that time, Detroit voters had also recently approved $1.5 billion in millage bonds to build new schools and renovate existing ones. I believe this bond money drew the attention of outside corporate interests with connections to Lansing legislators, and they cast hungry eyes on the many lucrative contracts to be let.

By the time of his departure as emergency financial manager, Robert Bobb put the school district $327 million in debt via reckless spending, blatant cronyism and a sell-off of the school district's valuable assets. Enter Roy Roberts, Gov. Rick Snyder's appointed emergency financial manager, who set about further dismantling DPS by jettisoning our students into charter schools and promptly leasing 15 of the district's lowest-performing schools to a new and untried state district euphemistically titled the Educational Achievement Authority.

Instead, Roberts should have kept those schools in the DPS fold and legally reconstituted their principals and faculties, but he held a dual leadership affiliation with the EAA and DPS, which amounted to an egregious conflict of interest.

Now a full 14 years after the failed takeover, DPS finally has a good elected board and knowledgeable president in the person of LaMar Lemmons and a capable interim superintendent. But Gov. Snyder has just signed into law a piece of legislation that unconstitutionally duplicates the hated Emergency Manager Law that Michigan citizens voted to repeal on Nov. 6. The slight changes in the new law are merely virtual.

In the case of the school district, unlike with the case of the City of Detroit, the fault for DPS' sorry plight lies with the state, rather than with the good DPS leadership that was in place prior to 1999. But now the schools have been innocently caught in the emergent whirlpool that is taking down the entire municipality.

On Aug. 10, a column by Free Press editorial page editor Stephen Henderson opined that Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette should desist from trying to disenfranchise Detroit voters retroactively by using a technicality to manufacture a scheme to invalidate the election of Detroit School Board members on the pretext that the district has lost population.

Rather than force the DPS board back into court to seek judicial rectification and justice for Detroit's schoolchildren, Gov. Snyder now has a rare opportunity to make a truly statesmanlike move: Turn the Detroit Public Schools system entirely back to its elected Board of Education and give me and the board a chance to put our own academic and financial houses in order without the undeserved and dictatorial interference of an emergency manager.

John Telford is interim superintendent of Detroit Public Schools.

Check out this review of my latest book!

NOTE: You may have to click to enlarge to see the entire article if it isn't right-sized automatically.

What is it about the word 'democracy' that Gov. Rick Snyder does not understand?

NOTE: This letter to the editor (written by yours truly) was published in the Dec. 6 edition of the Metro Times.

By Metro Times readers
PUBLISHED: DECEMBER 5, 2012
The doctor is in

As a lifelong Detroiter, I agree with Jack Lessenberry's column ("Saving Detroit," Nov. 28) that something drastic needs to be done for the municipality — but Detroit Public Schools has been caught unwillingly in the vortex calling for an emergency manager for the city. DPS never should have been taken over by the state in the first place. At the time of the 1999 takeover, we had a $93 million surplus and our test scores were at the state midpoint and rising — so why us and no one else? Part of the answer lies in the fact that voters had just approved a $1.5 billion construction bond, and affiliates of the Engler administration and other outsiders were voraciously eyeing lucrative contracts to be let. After 13 years of state-controlled "reform," minus a mere two, the scores have plummeted to the lowest in the country and there was a $350 million deficit at the time of Emergency Financial Manager Robert Bobb's departure. Enter EFM Roy Roberts, who turned over 15 of our schools to the new and untried so-called state "Educational Achievement" Authority instead of reconstituting those fifteen schools and keeping them, which is what should have happened. The current governor needs to recognize that the state's "reform" movement in DPS has been an abject failure. We have a good, new, elected DPS board now and a knowledgeable and committed president in the person of LaMar Lemmons and a knowledgeable and committed superintendent in the person of yours truly. Governor Snyder needs to thank Mr. Roberts for his service and send him on his way — and he needs to let us put our own financial and academic houses in order. That's what my fellow Detroiters said we want when we voted decisively to repeal Public Act 4, the undemocratic emergency manager law.

—John Telford, Superintendent (interim), Detroit Public Schools

With state takeover rejected, Detroit schools can refocus mission to serve students

Note: The following is my editorial reprinted from the Nov. 9 Opinion page of the Detroit Free Press

Detroit Public Schools has been both numerically and academically decimated during the past decade.

This tragic decimation, which has become painfully common knowledge locally and nationally, has occurred for a number of reasons. These include an unwarranted and abjectly unsuccessful state takeover, which has now been finally and rightfully rejected by Michigan's voters.
We would hope and expect that Gov. Rick Snyder, Attorney General Bill Schuette and the state Legislature will now bow to the will of the people and desist from planning any further undemocratic legislation to undermine that will.

We remain the largest school district in Michigan, and pockets of excellence also remain within DPS. We have a highly diverse and largely impoverished student population, and about 90% has been low-performing, although many bright, often college-bound honor students have also attended those schools. Because the City of Detroit in particular has been so challenged, it is now time for all Detroiters who care about our children's survival, and the survival of our city, to set our differences aside and work determinedly and with a single mind on our children's behalf. I will work hard and faithfully on behalf of our children and their education, and I will continue to do it for only $1 a year for salary.

The only constant for the Detroit Public Schools has been constant change. We've had superintendents, CEOs and emergency managers. We've had various school czars -- and now, we have me. I expect that my role in charge of the entire school district -- including both academics and finance -- will be challenged in court, but I expect to win.

I intend to refocus our schools entirely on our children. With a united grass-roots community and a good, democratically elected school board and president behind me, I pledge to accomplish that feat.
In this immediate wake of the justifiable repeal of the disenfranchising Emergency Manager Law, I now need to say that far from intending to "throw out the baby with the bath water," my curricular goal is to build on successful programs, jettison those that don't work, and ensure an aligned and coherent instructional framework.

The primary and obvious challenge before us is to prepare all our students to meet the challenges of the 21st Century and beyond. To accomplish this goal in Detroit, our greatest challenge is to make all schools safe, get all students to behave, and ensure that they can read and are computer literate.
We must also prepare our teachers, administrators and support staff to educate students fully -- both with new techniques and with time-proven methods so all of our staff will be prepared to enable our students to compete and be successful in an international society.
Preparing students and staff for a demanding world will require changing some of the ways we deliver instruction. Such a paradigm shift will refocus the district from what's good for adults to a system that focuses on what's good for children.

Let's all join hands to make it happen.

Why it is critical to vote NO on Proposal 1

This won't take long because the truth is rarely that complicated.

Those of you who know me and who have been following this blog already know how important I believe it is for Prop 1 to go down in flames. I have been up front about that from the beginning, long before I was appointed Interim Superintendent for the Detroit Public Schools. It is no secret that DPS is suffering from a back-breaking load of problems and challenges, and the financial challenges are just a part of that. But as someone who has been an educator and activist on behalf of Detroit's kids for more than 50 years, I am completely convinced that the appointment of an Emergency Manager by Gov. Rick Snyder is the worst possible solution to our problems. Taking away our right to vote, our right as citizens to decide how best to take care of our own children, is the worst possible solution.

And for those who think that this crusade is somehow all about me, I would remind you that I am only taking $1 as salary, and I will continue to only accept $1 as salary should we emerge victorious on Election Day, which recent polls seem to indicate that we just might do. That is how much I believe in this cause, and that is how much I am willing to sacrifice for this cause.

When President Barack Obama took office in January of 2009, he faced one of the worst national crises in American history. Had he not acted - and acted correctly - this country's economy could have slid right over the cliff and God only knows what condition we would be in right now. Similarly, the Detroit Public Schools is in a crisis situation that has the potential to destroy not just the futures of our children but the future of the entire city of Detroit. Because if our schools are not wrestled back from the brink of destruction, it is hard to imagine how our city will have any hope of success or rebirth. We always hear talk about how Detroit is coming back and is being reborn, but make no mistake; if DPS is not put back on the right track then this city's rebirth will disappear like a drop of water on a hot stove.

Mr. Roy Roberts and Gov. Snyder have been doing their best to convince you that they know what is best for us, and that we must accept their medicine without protest. But when you go to a doctor, if you disagree with the diagnosis, you can usually get a second opinion. Why is it that Gov. Snyder's opinion should be forced upon us as the only right choice? Why can't the people of Detroit be permitted to at least participate in their own future? Why doesn't Detroit deserve democracy? Because last time I checked, democracy was not something that had to be earned via the approval of a governor or anyone else.

If you are an American citizen then democracy is supposed to be your birthright.

I am not saying that I believe Gov. Snyder to be a bad man, nor do I believe Roy Roberts to be in any way evil. I am sure both of them honestly believe that the situation in Detroit is so bad that the only way to save it is to suspend Democracy and impose a solution. But they are wrong. So very, very wrong. And this is the message that they must be sent loud and clear when you go to the polls on Tuesday.

Thank you, and God Bless our children and our schools.