From the beginning, John Engler targeted destroying the fabric of the City. He took away residency requirements for City
employees. While this helped people who married city employees from other communities, and undercover police officers,
residency was intended so people who lived in the community governed and serviced their own community. It made public
service meaningful when one could walk down the block and knock on the door of a police officer, or administrator. Back
then, block clubs met at the nearby school. In the 1970’s, Detroit was known to have a church and a Coney Island restaurant
on every corner. However, a thriving group of black female professionals added a new business to the phrase in the late
1980’s. In the 1990’s, there was now a “church, beauty shop and a Coney Island on every corner.” Businesses! There was
pride in voting and union membership. Yet, Engler pushed to bring metal detectors into the schools. Whatever we may think
about violence and crime in Detroit, we could not find a case where a black student has come into a school anywhere in the
Country and shot it up. Then in 1999, Engler succeeded in taking over the Detroit Public Schools. Engler was not just a one
man operation. He was a visionary, and the Mackinac Policy Center formed with Richard McClellan reflects that vision. It
also reflects his vision that he could foresee a need for online education and is the Chair of K12 Inc. It reflects his vision that
McClellan is an expert on minority policy making world wide, and that McClellan wrote the first Charter laws for Detroit.
For the Coalition of today, let’s face it, Free Market Education is part of their vision, and that vision is shared by many. There
is simply no coincidence these parties have worked together through the same corporations, to move the same end game to
other minority districts, using the same players, to promote the same kinds of contracts, (i.e. after leaving Detroit, Robert Boik
and Barbara Byrd Bennett went to Chicago, where she is currently being investigated). In fact, one search firm has worked to
hire and transfer the same parties who are under investigation, from one district to another.
To be clear, charters and charter operators can be good and well meaning. However, let every voter be mindful when
approving a bond that the right to hold elected officials accountable for the spending of that bond money was taken from tax
payers in Detroit. And, it seems the point was not to improve academic performance, but to control the awarding of contracts
and subsidies so that charter operators would gain an advantage: even though children would be hurt in the process.
Corporations exist to make money. The emails and documents show that this collaboration of specific individuals to create a
political scenario to have themselves appointed over the budget by the City of Detroit has been at work for years. Here is the
joke. Here we have an State authorized EFM over the district, Robert Bobb, holding a hearing which he demands answers
from Ken Burnley, the previous State authorized decision maker, about why the district was run into debt! What the world
sees is one black man asking another black man to admit his wrong doing. Yet, both black men are agents of the State. And
Robert Bobb is on the same Coalition which in the following emails we see, is working with east coast think tanks to drive
students out of the district. The State is guilty of driving the district into deficit, and driving students into Charters.
After what happened with Ken Burnley, leading the appointed Reform Board of Mayoral appointees (who had no power)
under Governor Engler, in 2009, when the Coalition brainstormed how to SELL the removal of the duly Elected School
Board and replace it with Mayoral appointments was a challenge as the following Email reveals, in the drafting of the
Coalition’s Community Question and Answer Sheet ( FAQS).
Someone really did need to help that one! After Engler appointed, Ken Burnely, he spent $40 million for four floors of fancy
offices in buildings which DPS did not own, and other extravagances, and the community was hot.
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