LANSING, Mich. – Several of the worst public school districts in Michigan have been failing their students and mismanaging financial resources for decades.

Gov. Rick Snyder and the state legislature took strong action to address the problem last year by passing an updated “emergency manager” law, which gives a state-appointed manager the power to take over failing districts (as well as municipalities) and make all crucial decisions without school board or union consent.

Emergency managers in three school districts – Detroit, Highland Park and Muskegon Heights – have made or at least proposed sweeping changes to rein in runaway labor costs, lower budget deficits and improve the quality of instruction for students. Their solid plans were largely in place for the start of the new school year, just weeks away.

But the state’s largest teachers unions (and their Big Labor allies) won’t allow positive change without a fight.

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The unions circulated a petition around the state to put the emergency manager law on the statewide November ballot. A legal challenge arose, and the Michigan Supreme Court ruled last week that the issue should go on the ballot and the emergency manager law will be suspended until then.

Now, as the Detroit Free Press put it in a recent headline, the schools are in a state of chaos.

The failed school boards in Detroit and Highland Park are trying to reclaim authority to run their districts, based on the assumption that the emergency managers have lost all their legal powers until the election. The Detroit school board – which for years set the national standard for mismanagement and incompetence – has already voted to start unraveling the logical reforms put in place by the emergency manager.

Meanwhile, state officials are going to court to try to prevent the school boards from reclaiming authority.

All of this is happening because the unions couldn’t stand the idea of losing control of public education and having salary and benefits cut without their permission.

Children would clearly be better off under the emergency manager system, but the needs of students have never been high on the union priority list.

Districts were headed in the right direction

U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan once called Detroit Public Schools “ground zero” for public education in America. He knew what he was talking about.

The graduation rate in the district was reported as low as 42 percent in recent years. Enrollment was dropping by about 8,000 students per year. Budget deficits were skyrocketing into the hundreds of millions of dollars. In 2009, the district had the lowest scores ever recorded in the history of the national math proficiency test, according to a report in the New York Times.

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Several audits revealed that the district had been victimized by repeated theft and fraud perpetrated by administrators, other employees and outsiders.

The elected school board that ran the district was a complete embarrassment. The former board president was discovered to be functionally illiterate, and was forced to resign a few years ago after allegedly fondling himself during a private meeting with a female school administrator. Another board member told the media that the exposer should be forgiven.

As Stephen Henderson, editorial page editor for the liberal Detroit Free Press, wrote “When it comes to public officials, none is more profoundly intoxicated – sauced on power and staggering with incompetence – than the Detroit school board. The board has been so bad for so long (my mother did everything she could to avoid sending my sister and me to DPS schools in the 1970s) that nearly three generations of Detroiters have been criminally denied their constitutional rights to an adequate education.”

Former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm reacted to the mess in 2009 by appointing Robert Bobb as the district’s emergency financial manager.

Bobb was able to make some inroads. He closed about 30 schools due to rapidly declining enrollment and chronic failure, fired principals and teachers at low-performing schools, forced union teachers to accept a temporary $5,000 salary cut, and pushed through a $500 million bond issue that’s allowing the district to demolish abandoned buildings and replace them with new facilities, according to a report from Mlive.com.

Bobb also pushed through some academic reforms, like extended math and reading instruction for students and new evaluation processes for teachers, before a court ruled in December 2010 that he did not have the legal authority to control academics.

In February 2011, shortly before leaving his position, Bobb announced that graduation rates had improved in the district by four percentage points (58 to 62 percent), and dropout rates had decreased by two percent. Unfortunately he was unable to keep the deficit from rising above $300 million.

Snyder, who became governor in 2011, replaced Bobb with former auto company executive Roy Roberts. The governor and legislature gave Roberts more to work with by expanding the law to make emergency financial managers overall managers, with broad power to override school board decisions and unilaterally alter union contracts.

Roberts used his new authority to severely curtail spending and arrange low-interest, long-term financing for the district. Last November he announced that the district’s budget deficit had fallen below $100 million, its negative fund balance had been reduced by more than $43 million (13 percent), its $327 million legacy deficit had been reduced by $200 million and its credit rating had been restored.

Roberts also helped create the Education Achievement Authority of Michigan, an independent statewide entity “that will operate the lowest performing 5 percent of schools in Michigan not achieving satisfactory results on a redesign plan or that are under an emergency manager. It is designed to provide a new, stable, financially responsible set of public schools that create the conditions, supports, tools and resources under which teachers can help students make significant academic gains.”

The EEA is scheduled to take over 15 of Detroit’s worst schools this fall. The simple goal is to ensure that students stuck in those schools have some chance at a decent education.

The much smaller Highland Park school district, in an economically devastated community near Detroit, was given an emergency manager this spring, after state officials learned that the district had been operating with a budget deficit for five of the past six years, with a projected shortfall of $11.3 million for 2012-13. Public faith in the district had eroded to the point where enrollment had dropped from 3,179 students in 2006 to 1,331 in the recent school year.

Emergency Manager Joyce Parker recently recommended that the district be turned over to a private charter school operator for an indefinite period of time. That would allow students to learn in a focused environment without the distraction of union politics. It would also allow the district to completely function on a smaller budget with state aid dollars, while using local property tax revenue to pay down its debt.

The Muskegon Heights school district, on the west side of the state, also received an emergency manager earlier this year at the request of the school board. A private charter company has already been chosen to operate the district, and there are currently no signs of legal challenges to the reforms.

While problems persist at DPS, Highland Park and Muskegon Heights schools, the emergency managers were clearly leading their districts in the right direction.

Political power comes before student needs 

Of course the teachers unions wouldn’t settle for any arrangement that put their collective bargaining powers on the backburner. They circulated a petition and gained enough signatures this summer to put the new emergency manager law on the statewide ballot.

The Michigan Board of Canvassers initially threw out the petitions, based on the technicality that some of the wording was printed in the wrong font size. Last week the Michigan Supreme Court ordered the ballot proposal to go forward and suspended the emergency manager law until voters decide its fate.

The disgraced school boards in Detroit and Highland Park immediately moved to reclaim their authority, but were rebuffed by State Attorney General Bill Schuette, who ruled that the old emergency financial manager law is now back in place until the fate of the updated law is determined.

Snyder then quickly re-appointed the ousted managers as emergency financial managers in Detroit, Highland Park and Muskegon Heights. But Robert Davis, a member of the Highland Park school board, last week asked Schuette to remove Roberts and Parker, claiming Snyder failed to follow the proper procedure to re-appoint the officials. Davis said he will go to court if Schuette fails to cooperate.

Meanwhile, the Detroit school board took another step in the wrong direction last week, voting to void the district’s contact with the new Education Achievement Authority of Michigan. That means the 15 low-performing schools might again be subjected to the same incompetent management they had for years.

John Covington, chancellor of the EAA, told the media that the school board had no legal right to void the agreement. That issue will likely be resolved when the courts consider a lawsuit filed by the state to prevent the school boards from asserting authority over district operations.

What does all the legal wrangling mean? With just a few weeks left before the start of school, sensible plans to deal with huge budget deficits and provide better instruction for students are in jeopardy.

If the school boards and unions really cared about students, they would allow the emergency managers to remain in place until the election, and give reform plans a chance to work. But political power obviously comes before education for some people.

As one parent told the Free Press, “They’re talking about power and who’s going to be the boss. It seems like everybody lost focus on the kids. What about our babies?”

That’s a very good question, indeed.