academic performance, the district was midway between all districts in the State. McClellan, the visionary had
spent the last few years shaping the Mackinac Policy Center and writing the legislation he spoke of to help
break up the minority “monopoly”. One of those pieces of legislation Governor Engler put into motion was
Public Act 10 of 1999, a bill specifically for First Class School Districts in the State.
A First Class School District, by the 1999 definition was a school district with 100,000 students or more. The
state only had one First Class School District. That district was Detroit. Attorney Sharon McPhail sued in
Federal Court, complaining that the Governor had targeted Detroit, a minority district. The Federal Court ruled
that because another district could potentially grow to 100,000 students, and qualify for the legislation, it
therefore was not discriminatory. Public Act 10 said that after 5 years, residents could choose if they wanted to
stay under the State Reform of Public Act 10 or return to an elected School Board from their community.
Public Act 10, also called a Reform Experiment, dissolved the elected Board of DPS. In its stead, the act
created a Reform Board. The CEO of the Reform Board, Ken Burnley made most financial decisions under
consultation with the Governor. The Board also included The Superintendent of State Instruction or his
designee (the Superintendent chose the Treasurer Murray as his designee), and five persons appointed by the
Mayor. Governor Engler appointed Mike Duggan as the Interim Supervisor of Contracts for Rehabilitation for
Detroit Public Schools. In three months, under Public Act 10, $89 million dollars of bond money was spent.
The District decided to use the $1.5 billion dollar bonding authority almost immediately. The District
purchased four floors of the Fisher Building for $40 million and remodeled the building with chandeliers,
marble floors and other luxuries.
Crains reports that later, when questioned by Robert Bobb about excess profit made on the Fisher Building and
other projects by the construction companies, Reginald Turner, one of the five members of the Reform Board
appointed by the Mayor…
“said there was little detail given to the school board when the district purchased space in the Fisher Building.
He said then-superintendent Ken Burnley oversaw all of the financial details. “At that time, we were not in the
position to give the kind of scrutiny to that decision,” Turner told Bobb’s panel. “We were not given a chance
to weigh-in on that decision,” he said, later adding that Burnley’s office had the power to make financial
decisions on its own.”
Essentially, there was again one person spending hundreds of millions of the district’s and the tax payers money
and construction companies making tremendous profit in the calculation of 4% of $1.5 billion dollars, or $60
million dollars. What was spent lacks transparency and is unclear to the public.
The money is gone.
This is when the groundwork was lain for Detroit’s schools to go into financial decline. McClellan and Engler
hoped to create charters even then and wrote legislation to do so. A Metro Times article from January 8, 2003,
laments Engler’s veto of a transit bill:
“An unapologetic Engler spurned the Detroit area by vetoing the transit legislation. This placed in jeopardy
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