While Charters are located throughout Michigan, parents in white communities can choose to attend a
Charter/private school, which has an appointed Board which normally meets in private, -or- they can choose to
attend their locally run school district with a School Board elected by the local community, who answers to
them and the Michigan Board of Education. If they don’t like the running of those schools, they can seek them
out for redress, or vote those local people out of office.
In Detroit, Inkster, Highland Park and other minority cities, parents are forced to make decisions because:
- The Emergency Manager closed their neighborhood school;
- The Governor closed the school with an appropriate learning environment for their child’s disability;
- The Governor dissolved their school district;
- The Governor turned the District School into an EAA school;
- the closest school funded by the State and Federal government is a Charter;
- the closest school has problems associated with overcrowding.
Control and command is absolute. PA 436 gives the Board the right to meet and to present alternatives to
proposals of the Emergency Manager, theoretically; however, the Board is also thwarted from that right by
actions of the Governor’s agent we have described.
The local people, elected to speak for the community is challenged by retaliation which initiated this complaint.
The parents cannot advocate for their children in the minority community without fear of retaliation. The
teachers have been retaliated against at work for being union members and for being concerned parents.
Welcoming and Encouraging Community Participation In & Around Detroit Area Schools
Extra curricular activities at schools build the fabric of the community. This is harder to do when there is a
perception parents are not welcome. A complainant says that parents of special education students are not
notified to participate at special events at the school like field trips, honor roll achievement and Special
Olympics. Witnesses and complainants mentioned clubs which no longer have chapters because of school
closings and now they are not aware of what safe extracurricular activities are available. School closings
impact school sports teams events which communities enjoy.
“A lot of my friends go to Southeastern High School. The EM came and the EAA came and
fired every coach, after they won a title in 2009. They had a great program that was affected by
the State management and caused everyone in the community to be unhappy. When they closed
Redford High School, and moved the students to Henry Ford, they increased rivalries between
students. …There was a spike in crime and assault because they made a stupid decision. They
increased crime. They put two gangs in the same school, (the gangs were a small group)… now
it became a problem which didn’t exist before.” 114
By leaving people in the neighborhoods out of the decision making, the Governor hurt the City. He may think
he has done a lot for downtown, but African Americans don’t tend to live downtown.
ADVERSE IMPACT
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