Now-closed Wilbur Wright School, Detroit, Mich. (photo: Detroit Derek via Flickr.com)

Last month, the Detroit Public Schools (DPS) board voted 7-4 in a controversial decision to fire superintendent Connie Calloway, who had been in her post for 18 months.

Parents interviewed by Michigan Messenger who have children enrolled in DPS said they were concerned about the state of the school district, but they were also not happy about Calloway’s dismissal.

Wendy Johnson, 29, mother of a 9-year-old and a 6-year-old attending the Foreign Language Immersion and Cultural School (F.L.I.C.S.), said she was upset at the board’s decision to fire Calloway amid trying times. Overall, she did not seem happy with the quality of education her children were getting in DPS.

“I’m waiting for the days I can afford to put my kids in a private school system,” Johnson said. “We’re not getting any money for our kids. Right now my daughter’s class can’t afford a fifth-grade teacher. They have to split the fifth grade with fourth-grade teachers.”

Although Johnson has issues with DPS, she said F.L.I.C.S. has potential. But due to the disastrous budgeting issues facing the district, she said she has seen the quality of her daughters’ education plummet over the past year.

“F.L.I.C.S. was fabulous, one of the best schools,” she said. But her daughter’s performance in class has deteriorated because her teacher is teaching two different grade levels at once.

“Right now it’s getting to where I’m wondering what [9 year-old] Zaire is learning,” she said. Her daughter is bringing home less homework and showing slower advancement in learning, she added.

But Johnson defended Calloway, saying that her termination was unfair and that the school board used her as a scapegoat.

“The stuff that they are trying to blame Connie Calloway for is stuff she inherited. They got rid of her for no reason,” she said.

“She was gonna start holding people accountable. The board got rid of the accountant [Joan McCray], too. But who was there when they spent the money and went [$408 million] in debt? A lot of the board members were there when all this money went missing.”

Johnson went as far as to say that the entire school board needed to be replaced. “Everyone who knew what was going on didn’t want to fire Calloway,” she said.

Sanders Hawkins, 31, is a parent of six with three students in DPS. Two attend Isaac Prairie Elementary School and one attends Communication and Media Arts Elementary School. Hawkins also thinks firing Calloway was a step backward.

“I just really feel they didn’t allow the proper time for her to do her job,” he said.

Hawkins came up through the DPS system, he said, so he feels his children should be able to do the same. His main complaint was with the teachers who are “there for a paycheck.”

“Me and my wife, we have a problem with a teacher that curses and swears at the children—these are first- through third-graders—and they expect the kids to respect them.”

Lately Hawkins said his children have not been learning as much in school. When he asks his children what they learned in school, he said they often answer, “We played in school today.”

Parents aren’t doing much to improve the situation, he added. “If we had more parents involved in the school and not going up and challenging teachers, more would get done,” he said.

He criticized the fact that Calloway is still collecting her annual $280,000 salary, since she was on a five-year contract with DPS.

“[DPS has] enough money to let someone go relax on the beach on their account, but they can’t afford supplies.”

He said he’s been to schools where there were no paper, books or writing supplies. “They don’t have chalk to write on the boards,” he said.

Sheila Martin, 46, a parent of a student at Martin Luther King High School, said she was not surprised Calloway got fired but doesn’t think it was right.

“It seemed to me like the board was letting personal feuds get in the way of what’s best for the children,” she said. “These aren’t the things you need to be focusing on when you have classrooms with no heat in the winter.”

MLK High was without heat in November and it was hard for her daughter to concentrate in the cold, she said.

“I know people from other school districts in the suburbs who don’t have to put up with this,” she said. “It’s gotten to the point where no one’s cooperating. The teachers don’t want to teach, the parents don’t want to help and the school board’s so unstable the can’t keep a superintendent. What breaks my heart is that this is our future.”