Detroit Rocked by Teachers' "Sickout" Protesting Dire Conditions Under
Emergency Management
By Amy Goodman and Nermeen Shaikh
Democracy Now! Thursday, January 21, 2016
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/34509-detroit-rocked-by-teachers-sickout-protesting-dire-conditions-under-emergency-management?tmpl=component&print=1
On Wednesday, 88 of Detroit's roughly 100 public schools were closed in the
latest mass teacher "sickouts" protesting underfunding, black mold, rat
infestations, crumbling buildings and inadequate staffing. Detroit Public
Schools are under the control of unelected emergency manager Darnell
Earley - none other than the unelected emergency manager who presided over
the water contamination in Flint. We discuss the sickout and the state of
Detroit's schools with two guests: Victor Gibson, a retired Detroit public
school teacher and active union member, and Russ Bellant, an education
advocate and the former education director for the stationary engineers
union, where he trained engineers working in the Detroit Public Schools.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: On Wednesday, 88 of Detroit's roughly 100 public schools
were closed in the latest mass teacher "sickouts" protesting underfunding,
black mold, rat infestations, crumbling buildings and inadequate staffing.
Detroit's public schools are under the control of unelected emergency
manager, Darnell Earley. He's none other than the unelected emergency
manager who presided over the water contamination in Flint.
AMY GOODMAN: We're joined by two guests right now: Victor Gibson, retired
Detroit public school teacher and active union member, and Russ Bellant, an
education advocate and the former education director for the stationary
engineers union, where he trained engineers working in the Detroit Public
Schools.
Victor Gibson, let's go to you. Talk about your school - you retired from it
last year as a teacher - that is one of the schools that was closed by the
sickout on the day that President Obama was in Detroit hailing the success
of the auto industry.
VICTOR GIBSON: Yes. Let me be clear that my school is - the name is Paul
Robeson Malcolm X, but it's the combination of both schools from an earlier
combination of closing of schools. My school is the school that - where the
three ladies who have been, thus far, very active in getting the main body
of teachers to stand up for themselves, after being quietly left into the
classrooms for so long. And these - this school is one of the schools that
have said enough is enough. And these teachers have finally kind of listened
to themselves, listened to their students and their parents, who have stated
that these children and our children have been under such great duress and
strain from not learning, but not for being educated, but as opposed to
being just constantly tested, tested, tested. I know most of your listeners
should be aware of these whole phenomena of reform for schools that have
gone on since 2005, 2006, and even before that. So, this whole thing of
changing the curriculum from one where you are nurturing children to their
fullest potential to one where they're being just put in front of computers
and lab-rat-tested on any particular curriculum they happen to come along -
AMY GOODMAN: I mean, I think - I think "rat" is the operative word here, and
not just lab rats, but actually rats in the schools.
VICTOR GIBSON: Yes, exactly.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the astounding conditions that we just saw
described? When, you know, we're dealing - a lot of the nation's focus is
now on Flint. But black mold, rats, mice in the schools? How has it come to
this point?
VICTOR GIBSON: Well, if you look at it as a homeowner, if you buy a home and
you don't invest in your infrastructure of your home, the longer you stay in
that building, the building is going to deteriorate. That just goes without
saying. And with this deficit spending, where the home for - for the money
that's being channeled away from the structure of the buildings, yes, the
roof has leaked. This is our - for Paul Robeson Malcolm X, this is our
third - no, this is our fourth school that we've been placed in, and each
school is getting progressively worse. We're now a K-through-eight school,
but now we're being housed in a building that was originally built for K
through five. So, everything is primarily on a smaller scale. But when you
look at the roof, that has been gone neglected.
If you look at the - just the electrical infrastructure, let's talk about
that. We have all of this high-tech equipment they're trying to interface
and infuse into the school system, but you're in a building that doesn't
carry that kind of electrical load. And so, even if you get the technology
in there, there's a good chance it will not work. So that's - I mean, as far
as the structure of the building, windows - I mean, we look at the windows
that were made for schools back in the 1940s, 1950s, I mean, these windows
are still in place. I mean, there might have been upgrades here and there,
but between the water system and the pipes and the plumbing - I remember
this one water system that we had, I had to prevent the children from
actually drinking from that water back in 2012, when we moved into the
building, because I noticed the grey - the orange-yellowish tint that was
coming out the faucet. So I made the administration aware of that, but the
only change they - the only thing they did was just try to shut down that
particular drinking stations that were in the school. So -
AMY GOODMAN: Let me bring Russ Bellant into this conversation.
VICTOR GIBSON: - if we look at the age of the pipe - yes.
AMY GOODMAN: I just want to bring Russ in, before we wrap up the discussion.
Darnell Earley, the emergency manager who was responsible for the water
change in Flint, using - instead of the Detroit water system that Flint had
used for 50 years - the dirty, corrosive, polluted Flint River, has now been
moved to oversee the DPS, the Detroit Public Schools. Can you explain the
connection and what's happening now?
RUSS BELLANT: Well, the common thread there, of course, is the governor of
the state of Michigan - in this case, Rick Snyder. But he's one of three
governors since 1999 who have been systematically dismantling the Detroit
Public Schools system, looting it and taking it from a big surplus it had
under the elected school board and rising enrollment and rising test scores
up through 1999 - they took it over. And it's - what we're looking at, Amy,
is a 17-year process of dismantling the Detroit Public Schools system, of
eroding its capacity for education, for service in this community.
And, you know, the governor is still not even fully telling the truth, not
only on the Flint water situation, but on the Detroit Public Schools. He
said in October that the debt will be about $515 million. Well, if you look
at the audited financial reports from 2013, it was $686 million. June 2015,
they're reporting $786 million. He's saying $515 million maybe. So, you
know, this is a governor who hasn't got the commitment to education, and he
follows in a line of several others that have systematically exploited DPS
and created lies and - you know, frankly, to mislead the public, so people
would buy into the support and the end of democracy in Detroit and for
dictatorship from Lansing.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Russ Bellant, you're right to point this out, and now the
situation is such that Detroit Public Schools could run out of money as
early as April. Could you talk about what that would mean?
RUSS BELLANT: Well, when they say run out of money, they're saying that
teachers wouldn't get paid, the staff wouldn't get paid. And they paint a
bleak - a vague picture of a system being shut down. But they - I think what
the other thing that this talks to, Amy, is that the state of Michigan has
never done an analysis of what it costs to educate a child. They were
mandated by the Legislature to come up with a cost estimate to use for
funding education in Detroit and across the state. They failed to do so. And
so, what they're really suggesting - and this is - there's other school
districts suffering in Michigan, as well, on the funding side. They're
really saying that they're not adequately funding education. And -
AMY GOODMAN: Just let me ask you quickly - it's not just about not having
money, right? You've got two, amazingly enough, state-run city school
systems.
RUSS BELLANT: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about where that money is going? Because there are
millions of dollars going into the schools.
RUSS BELLANT: Yeah. A huge amount of the money is going to contractors and
to investors for - where the district - and this goes back some years under
the period when our elected board was actually dismantled by law. It was -
ceased to exist. And they did huge financial deals that we paid 50 percent
financial costs for, for hundreds of millions of dollars. We're still paying
that, as well as a whole set of new loans, short- and long-term loans, and
bond programs that were unnecessary. And all this was to enrich contractors.
And many of us in the community believe that the real reason for the
takeover of the Detroit Public Schools system by these successive governors
was about a looting operation and using it as a cash cow for friends and
contractors and investors. The district right now is being run by a
consulting company out of New York City.
AMY GOODMAN: Called?
RUSS BELLANT: And they're not putting any top talent in there. They're
putting college graduates in there, and they're making decisions that the
educators should be making in the city, and the parents and the community.
AMY GOODMAN: What's it called, the contractor in New York?
RUSS BELLANT: Parthenon Group.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, we're going to have to leave it there, but we'll continue
to cover this story. Russ Bellant, education advocate, and Victor Gibson,
retired Detroit public school teacher. This is Democracy Now!,
democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman, with Nermeen
Shaikh.
Amy Goodman is the host and executive producer of Democracy Now!, a
national, daily, independent, award-winning news program airing on over
1,100 public television and radio stations worldwide. Time Magazine named
Democracy Now! its "Pick of the Podcasts," along with NBC's Meet the Press.
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