Something smells at DPS: Superintendent absent as parents, teachers vent

Detroit Public School promotional signage on Metro bus (photo: femaletrumpet02 via Flickr.com)

[Ed. note: Stay tuned to this story; there were new developments we'll be reporting shortly.]

Last Monday evening, Detroit Public Schools officials hosted the monthly program titled “Conversation with the Superintendent” at Renaissance High School, at which parents, teachers and students came out to voice their concerns about  the city’s schools with Superintendent Connie Calloway.

Calloway didn’t show up, citing an emergency board committee meeting on school finances, school board member Marie Thornton told Michigan Messenger.

But according to Thornton, Calloway is known to skip her own monthly meetings with concerned parents and teachers.

“She’ll miss quite a bit,” Thornton said. “She won’t show up, and she’ll send her surrogates.”

Still, Calloway’s absence last week didn’t keep people in attendance from airing their complaints, most of which had to do with the Jerry L. White Special Education Center at Renaissance High.

Thornton said other schools weren’t represented because parents are tired of attending meetings and seeing no results. “You have parents who don’t attend these meetings because nothing gets done,” she said.

Those at last Mondays meeting were there because they needed serious attention. According to teachers and parents, the White center had no heat or lights and they repeatedly described a sewage odor that had “permeated the building.”

Many of the problems described exemplified how the school district is struggling financially. This month the school board adopted a budget that calls for $173 million in cuts to help ease a $400 million deficit.

The cutbacks will eliminate 300 jobs and call for the closure of 63 schools by 2013. The district also will buy fewer textbooks for students.

Earlier that day, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Mike Flanagan declared that the district is in a “financial emergency.” He announced that the state will appoint an emergency financial officer to take over.

Other comments came from West Side Multicultural Academy, Martin Luther King High School and Communication and Media Arts high school regarding a lack of heat and lights in the classrooms and a shortage of teachers and substitute teachers.

One student from Martin Luther King High School said she has not had a teacher or a substitute teacher for her French class for some time and was worried about being able to graduate. A parent from CMA High complained that her child did not receive any grades for the first semester of school because of a shortage of teachers.

Adding to the disarray of the district, Joan McCray, the DPS chief financial officer who was hired along with Calloway, was fired last week when the board decided not to renew her contract.

At a school board meeting scheduled tonight, the board will make a decision whether to renew Calloway’s contract. There has been ongoing tension between Calloway and the school board since she was hired a year ago.

Video from last Monday’s meeting follows: