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DETROIT, MI — Dozens of Detroit teachers staged a “sick-out” protest in January 2016, to draw attention to the deplorable condition of the school buildings that were still in operation, and the conditions under which they were expected to teach.
In February of 2016, Stephen Rhodes was appointed the head of Detroit Public Schools by Governor Rick Snyder. As the judge who had presided over the Detroit Bankruptcy hearings that put much of the burden of paying off Detroit’s massive debts on the backs of retired city workers and homeowners facing foreclosure and water shut-offs, his is an all-too familiar name.
Rhodes takes the place of Darnell Earley, former Flint City Manager, who oversaw the fatal switch from the Detroit water system to the untreated Flint River water, which thoroughly contaminated the city’s water supply. The inexplicable decision of the governor to put Earley in charge of the Detroit Public School System was met with fierce public resistance. Earley resigned in February just over a month into his tenure.
The “official” departure in December 2014 of Snyder-appointed Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr in Detroit did not restore local control, a false promise used to placate the critics of emergency management.
The fact is, emergency management, which serves corporate interests, has continued unabated in Detroit, with its key players still in the game. The salary of the head of the Detroit Public Schools is said to be in the neighborhood of $225,000. Despite attempts to allay the criticisms he knew he’d face, all indications are that Rhodes will continue the state’s work of dismantling public education in Detroit, diverting resources toward solutions that will serve a privileged few instead of every child at every level of socioeconomic existence.
Governor Snyder’s claim that Rhodes is “highly respected in the city” is almost incomprehensible to anyone who has been involved in fighting the imposed dictatorship of emergency management, but it is also revealing. It is easy to forget that when emergency management was put to a statewide vote in 2012, Proposal 4 was defeated by a narrow margin. Forty-eight percent supported it.
It is made clearer every day that the corporate government has no answers and no solutions for a discarded population who were once valuable to Detroit’s automobile and manufacturing industries, the denial is beginning to crack. New fighters come into this struggle every day as they connect the dots. Emergency management is one symptom of a dying capitalist system that cannot serve the needs of the many and survive.
