to collect the books which mattered to us. They do not live in the city. Our block club fought
segregation 50 years ago, when our children were not able to attend the local school because
they were black. We were proud of that. Now our schools are gone. Children today do not
have the same sense of community. There has been a breakdown on all levels because whereas
children in white schools who live on the same block attend the same school, the Emergency
managers have poisoned us with new hostility and rivalry as children have different allegiances
all going to different schools and don’t root for the same school teams anymore. Children that
can’t get to a school because of the cost of bus fair too often drop out. During this period there
has been an escalation and diversion of Detroit and Highland Park students to other schools, to
the streets and to prison. It is destruction of community. Our roots have been cut out from
underneath. Where people used to wave, now we walk down the street and no one knows one
another.
Most of the African American school districts state wide are under some configuration of local
disenfranchisement and assigned exclusively to the Governor's operation as opposed to the
majority white districts which are under local control and the Michigan Department of
Education. The majority of African American students in the State of Michigan and their
parents have no local voice in their school governance. Whites have local control, African
Americans do not. If one moves into these voting districts, they lose their right to local
representation of their tax dollars.
Recently, Governor Snyder transferred the EAA from the Michigan Department and Education.
He moved the EAA to the Department of Management, Budget and Technology which he
controls exclusively. This is a coup d’état of the constitutionally mandated authority to the
Michigan Department of Education, the State Board of Education, and the State Superintendent
of Instruction.
Detroit Public Schools, Benton Harbor Public Schools, Muskegon Heights Public Schools, and
my own Highland Park Public Schools, and others are also not under the control of the State
Superintendent, which is also a potential violation of the State Constitution. The State
Superintendent has only limited authority over charters in black majority districts.
We even lose the right to name our schools. For instance, Governor Snyder changed the name
of Finney High School to East English Village High School. Finney was named after Jared
Finney, a famous white abolitionist working on the Detroit leg of the Underground Railroad
who donated the land to construct the school.
131