PICKET DWSD HUBER FACILITY WED. AUG. 15 4 PM–SAVE OUR WATER DEPT!
LANSING RALLY VS. NEW EM LAW WED. AUG 15 10 AM
AFSCME Council 25 President Al Garrett is personally inviting you to join us in Lansing! He is requesting that every labor union, every church, every organization get a bus, car pool, or van and come to Lansing on Wednesday, August 15, 2012 at 10:00 a.m. – MI State Capitol Building and let the Legislators know we mean business – Democracy is here to stay!
Please copy the attached document and pass it on! Thank you very much – together we can do this!
If you would like to ride to Lansing with AFSCME, we have reserved one bus–see information listed below!
To print copy of flier, click on LOBBY DAY JOIN US.
DPS BOARD RESTORES EAA SCHOOLS TO DISTRICT AS PA 4 IS SUSPENDED; COURT HEARING TUES. AUG. 14 10 AM
- State statute MCL 8.4 does not allow PA 72 EFM reinstatement, says community
- Hearing on EM Roy Roberts’ suit to maintain control over DPS Aug. 14, 10 a.m. Wayne County Circuit Court Judge John Murphy, CAYMC
By Diane Bukowski
August 12, 2012
DETROIT – Detroit’s Board of Education declared Aug. 9 that they are taking back their power as elected officials over the Detroit Public School (DPS) district. The day before, the state Board of Canvassers placed Public Act 4, the “emergency manager law,” on the ballot, suspending the it until the State’s November elections.
The Board’s first action was a vote to restore 15 schools to the district by terminating the DPS “Educational Achievement Authority” (EAA) contract with Eastern Michigan University. They also terminated a contract with “Teach for America,” which provides idealistic but barely-trained individuals to teach classes in the EAA.
“We are terminating the inter-local agreement with EMU and demanding the return of our schools,” declared Board President Lamar Lemmons II. “According to a lawsuit filed by AFSCME, EM Roy Roberts had no authority to take those schools.”
The “Educational Apartheid Authority,” as board member Elena Herrada termed it, is allegedly a state-wide district but includes only Detroit schools. It targets the “lowest-performing” five percent of schools in the state. In addition to removing the schools from DPS control, it also removes them from the supervision of the State Board of Education. (Click on http://voiceofdetroit.net/2012/07/29/teach-in-against-the-phony-educational-achievement-authority/ for a listing of the schools involved.)
Critics say that instead of improving students’ performance, it will subject them to isolation in computer-run classes provided by lucrative corporate contracts, untrained teachers, the elimination of services for special needs students, who are to be folded into regular classes, and possible further charterization.
- Keith January, presiden of AFSCME Local 345 which represents special education aides, denounces EAA and charter schools.
Keith January, president of AFSCME Local 345, which represents 500 special education aides, gave an impassioned presentation against the EAA during the board meeting.
“We have been informed that Wayne RESA is cutting funding for the DPS,” he said. “Forty-nine special ed classes are being disbanded and lay-off notices are going out. There are 195 children in the EAA along with 600 students with special needs. How do you you put students with special needs in failing schools? They just want the federal special ed money. Make sure our education process is not corrupted by corporate Gordon Gekko types. There are also 60,000 students in Detroit in charter schools, most of them for-profit.”
He said the board must begin the process to get not only the EAA students, but the students in charter schools back to fully-functioning Detroit public schools immediately.
- Youths in Highland Park gather outside HP School Board meeting April 29, 2004 as most of their teachers were being laid off.
“We have anarchy in the streets right now, video games are being played out in reality. This is nothing but the result of the hopelessness these young people feel. It is not going to get better until we build a road for them to come back.”
The board’s vote to disband the EAA was a direct challenge to Gov. Rick Snyder and DPS EM Roy Roberts, who also chairs the EAA board. The EAA board declared the same day that it will maintain control, voted on EAA contracts, and has continued recruiting students.
During the meeting, Edith Lee Payne, a litigant in a class action lawsuit against Public Act 4, and former Detroit school board member Marie Thornton challenged Gov. Rick Snyder and State Treasurer Andy Dillon’s assertions that PA 4 is currently replaced by PA 72. That act allowed appointed managers control only over the finances of municipalities and school districts and did not allow abrogation of union contracts.
Payne pointed out that state documents show PA 72 was repealed March 16, 2011, the day that PA 4 was declared effective. She noted that MCL 8.4 says clearly,
“Whenever a statute, or any part thereof shall be repealed by a subsequent statute, such statute, or any part thereof, so repealed, shall not be revived by the repeal of such subsequent repealing statute.”
Thornton, who was present during oral arguments before the State Supreme Court on putting PA 4 on the ballot, said Chief Justice Robert Young specifically noted at the close of the hearing that PA 72 could not replace PA 4.
However, Roberts filed suit to maintain his powers over both financial and academic aspects of DPS immediately after PA 4 was placed on the ballot.
“He’s trying to be declared king for life,” George Washington, who has been retained as the Board’s attorney, said sarcastically. A hearing on Roberts’ suit is set for Tues. Aug. 14 at 10 a.m. before Wayne County Circuit Court Judge John Murphy in the Coleman A. Young Municipal Center.
“An entire generation of students has been damaged forever by the state’s Tuskegee-like experiment with Detroit schools,” Washington said. “Lansing’s attack has gone on for the last 13 years and must be stopped.”
He said the board plans to ask Judge Murphy to formally re-imstall them to prevent further confusion and damage.
DPS enrollment has dropped from 140,000 since the first state takeover in 1999, when district students were achieving high scores. The district had a surplus of $99 million in 1999, but has had repeated deficits during the two state takeovers, largely due to excessive borrowing by the state-appointed officials.
Over 80 percent of the district’s school aid is held apart by a state trustee to pay the district’s debt to the banks.
The board held a closed session with Washington on the Roberts lawsuit, as well one filed by State Attorney General Bill Schuette, challenging the seats of seven school board members. He claims claiming DPS is not entitled to “first-class” school district status because its enrollment has dropped below 60,000.
“The whole community will wrap its arms around you for de-certifying the EAA,” DPS teacher Steve Conn told the board.
Nicole Conaway teaches at the Catherine Ferguson Academy, where students sustained arrests last year for a sit-in to keep their school open. The sit-in received national coverage. The school, which welcomed young mothers with their babies as well as pregnant teens, remained open although DPS transformed it into a charter school.
“Act NOW,” Conaway told the board. “Re-open all closed schools, and order Roy Roberts and his staff to vacate their offices.”
Newly re-elected U.S. Reprentative John Conyers, with staff members Marion Brown and Isaac Robinson attended the meeting.
“The work you are doing today is so important,” Conyers told the board. “People are very concerned about how our children are trained, culturized and education in the 21st century. More and more the House committee on Education is trying to concern itself with keeping our children in the public school system.”
Conyers said he planned to speak with President Barack Obama the next day about federal action against Public Act 4. A letter he sent to Attorney General Eric Holder Dec. 2 asking for an investigation of violations of the National Voting Rights Act under PA 4 has gone unanswered.
The Board additionally voted, with two abstentions, to install Dr. John Telford as interim superintendent pending the election in November. Board member Tawanna Simpson told VOD after the meeting that the Board’s intended to appoint Telford only temporarily and establish a search committee later.
He gave a lengthy generalized descriptions of his plans.
While he gave a special welcome to Detroit Federation of Teachers (DFT) president Keith Johnson, Free Detroit No Consent members Valerie Glenn and Edith Lee Payne confronted Johnson during a break, asking why he has not taken a more militant stance since Roberts’ abrogation of the DFT contract.
Johnson said he has no plans for the DFT to take a strike vote, and is depending instead on the union-sponsored ballot proposal to amend the Michigan constitution to make collective bargaining a right for all workers.
A mother holding her child who is Vice-President of the LSCO for Maybury Elementary school called on Telford to propose specific plans for the future instead of generalized statements.
“Because we organized to save Maybury, it was the only school that survived the last round of closures,” she said. “We want to make sure that we are not dragging our kids through the mud again this time.” Click on http://save-maybury.org/2012/03/26/dps_22marzo/.
Block Club President Wayne Bernard told the board, “Stay away from Luther Keith and that ARISE Detroit crap. They are doing nothing but thriving off our money. Get rid of the Detroit Parent Network (DPN) and evict them from their DPS building.”
The DPN, which has ties to the Skillman Foundation and other privatizers, was formed in an effort to replace the elected LSCO’s.
At the conclusion of the meeting, board member Elena Herrada said the struggle to restore DPS to properly educate the city’s children will depend not on court or electoral action, but on the will of the people to take direct action.
For more on the Educational Achievement Authority, click on http://critical-moment.org/2012/06/25/the-educational-achievement-authority-detroits-top-secret-school-district/. VOD covered the teach-in against the EAA Aug. 2 and will also be reporting on that. For more information contact Herrada at 313-303-3809.
PUBLIC SCHOOLS ARE THE NEXT BIG THING FOR PRIVATE EQUITY AND VENTURE CAPITAL
- Lansing, 2001: Detroit Public School Teachers walked out of classes to protest in the state’s capitol against a bill that would have allowed more charter schools in Michigan. This was the last militant action taken by the DFT, which has fallen prey to to inactivism of its top leadership since then President Janna Garrison was defeated.
By Stephanie Simon, Reuters | Aug. 2, 2012
(reprinted from the Business Insider)
The investors gathered in a tony private club in Manhattan were eager to hear about the next big thing, and education consultant Rob Lytle was happy to oblige.
Think about the upcoming rollout of new national academic standards for public schools, he urged the crowd. If they’re as rigorous as advertised, a huge number of schools will suddenly look really bad, their students testing way behind in reading and math.
They’ll want help, quick. And private, for-profit vendors selling lesson plans, educational software and student assessments will be right there to provide it.
“You start to see entire ecosystems of investment opportunity lining up,” said Lytle, a partner at The Parthenon Group, a Boston consulting firm. “It could get really, really big.”
Indeed, investors of all stripes are beginning to sense big profit potential in public education.
The K-12 market is tantalizingly huge: The U.S. spends more than $500 billion a year to educate kids from ages five through 18. The entire education sector, including college and mid-career training, represents nearly 9 percent of U.S. gross domestic product, more than the energy or technology sectors.
Traditionally, public education has been a tough market for private firms to break into — fraught with politics, tangled in bureaucracy and fragmented into tens of thousands of individual schools and school districts from coast to coast.
Now investors are signaling optimism that a golden moment has arrived. They’re pouring private equity and venture capital into scores of companies that aim to profit by taking over broad swaths of public education.
- University Club in NYC, private social club located at 1 West 54th Street at Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, New York, NY.
The conference last week at the University Club, billed as a how-to on “private equity investing in for-profit education companies,” drew a full house of about 100.
OUTSOURCING BASICS
In the venture capital world, transactions in the K-12 education sector soared to a record $389 million last year, up from $13 million in 2005. That includes major investments from some of the most respected venture capitalists in Silicon Valley, according to GSV Advisors, an investment firm in Chicago that specializes in education.
The goal: an education revolution in which public schools outsource to private vendors such critical tasks as teaching math, educating disabled students, even writing report cards, said Michael Moe, the founder of GSV.
“It’s time,” Moe said. “Everybody’s excited about it.”
Not quite everyone.
The push to privatize has alarmed some parents and teachers, as well as union leaders who fear their members will lose their jobs or their autonomy in the classroom.
Many of these protesters have rallied behind education historian Diane Ravitch, a professor at New York University, who blogs and tweets a steady stream of alarms about corporate profiteers invading public schools.
Ravitch argues that schools have, in effect, been set up by a bipartisan education reform movement that places an enormous emphasis on standardized test scores, labels poor performers as “failing” schools and relentlessly pushes local districts to transform low-ranked schools by firing the staff and turning the building over to private management.
- Move to profit from public education is bipartisan. President Barack Obama and his education secretary Arne Duncan favor charter schools.
President Barack Obama and both Democratic and Republican policymakers in the states have embraced those principles. Local school districts from Memphis to Philadelphia to Dallas, meanwhile, have hired private consultants to advise them on improving education; the strategists typically call for a broader role for private companies in public schools.
“This is a new frontier,” Ravitch said. “The private equity guys and the hedge fund guys are circling public education.”
Some of the products and services offered by private vendors may well be good for kids and schools, Ravitch said. But she has no confidence in their overall quality because “the bottom line is that they’re seeking profit first.” Continue reading
DID CITY DIRECTORS STEAL FED $$$ FOR PRIVATE AGENCIES?
![CC 8 7 12 DHWP grilled by Council](http://voiceofdetroit.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/CC-8-7-12-DHWP-grilled-by-Council.jpg)
During session on possible theft of federal funds, city and state officials are grilled by Council members. They are (l to r) MDCH executive Jean Chabut, city finance director Cheryl Johnson, city COO Chris Brown, and (far right) Health Department director/IPH CEO Loretta Davis.
Council grills Workforce and Health Dept. officials re: auditor’s reports
By Diane Bukowski
August 9, 2012
DETROIT – The Detroit City Council unanimously called on the Law Department and the city’s incoming Inspector General to investigate the transfer of federal funds from the city’s Departments of Workforce Development (DWDD) and Health and Wellness Promotion (DHWP) to private accounts. During a special session Aug. 7, they asked for all actions necessary, civil and criminal, to be taken after the investigation concludes.
The status of the two departments, which the Bing administration had planned to turn over to private agencies, is unclear now that Public Act 4 is on the ballot. Bing used the city’s PA 4 consent agreement in his unilateral transfer.
- (L to r) Former DWDD director Pamela Moore, now DESC CEO, DESC board chair David Baker Lewis, COO Chris Brown, and state officials listen to Councilwoman Brenda Jones’ questions.
Council members grilled DWDD director Pamela Moore, DHWP Director Loretta Davis, the city’s chief operating officer Chris Brown, Finance Director Cheryl Johnson, and other officials about fund transfers to Detroit Employment Solutions Corporation (DESC) and the Institute for Population Health (IPH), private companies not yet certified as non-profits by the IRS.
Moore now holds the title of CEO of DESC, while Davis occupies two positions as DHWP Director and as CEO of IPH. DWDD workers and contractors have been laid-off, while DHWP workers are to be laid off Sept. 28.
Moore, Davis, Brown and state officials all claimed no conflict of interest exists in the situation.
Council legal consultants have said the Charter requires the Mayor to submit an Executive Re-Organization Plan for approval by Council before any shutdowns and/or transfers of departments. Council members said Aug. 7 that they had received no such plan.
Detroit Employment Solutions Corporation
“I want the Auditor General, Fiscal Analyst, Law Department and Budget to place a hold on these City of Detroit accounts,” Councilwoman JoAnn Watson said. “It is not lawful for one individual to go down to First Independence Bank and withdraw funds from a city account using one signature, and then place them in another account at Comerica Bank for private use.”
“The grant recipient is the City of Detroit,” Councilwoman Brenda Jones said. “That means the City of Detroit is financially responsible and accountable for the management of those funds. The Council had to approve these grants. Nobody can say this body is going to be responsible for $48 million transferred under the same board by the same director who worked at DWDD. There are going to be fireworks!”
City Council Fiscal Analyst Irvin Corley concurred with Jones’ allegations.
Brown said some of the funds have since been returned to city accounts. He, DWDD Board Director David Baker Lewis, and state officials contended that the DWDD is being dismantled and its workers laid off due to irregularities discovered in audits beginning in 2002, including $5.5 million in funding disallowed by the federal government.
They did not produce supporting documentation.
Moore changed the name of the private organization to DESC on June 29, 2012 according to state documents. Those documents trace the organization back to 1984, when it was founded by Lewis as “The Detroit Private Industry Council’’ (DPIC). He has now come full circle to chair the board of the DESC.
The DPIC was to receive grants from the state and other public and private sources “to prepare youth and unskilled adults for entry into the labor force” under the federal Job Training Partnership Act. Its history was subsequently intertwined with that of the City of Detroit Employment and Training Department, which paid fees for later filings with the state.
Through the 1990’s, Employment and Training was privatized piecemeal. Directors replaced city workers with various non-profit providers, according to documents from the Coalition to Stop Privatization and Save Our City. Click on CSPSOC to read whole flier. Excerpt is below.
In 1997, the DPIC became “The Detroit Workforce Development Board.” In 1998, Willie Walker, then director of E&TD, became the resident agent and sole officer of the board. In 2005, Cylenthia LaToye Obayan, a subsequent department E&TD director, joined the board.
On Dec. 9, 2011, the name was changed to the “Detroit Workforce Development Board Corporation.” On June 29, 2012, Moore as resident agent changed its name to Detroit Employment Solutions Inc.”
(Click on DESC DWDD state docs to view state documents.)
Guidestar, to which the IRS provides annual 990 tax filings for non-profits, says the Detroit Workforce Development Board is not currently registered with the IRS, which was confirmed by an IRS database search.
Its last tax filing for 2009 showed it had a fund balance of $23,050, but sections for revenues and expenses were filled in with zeroes. Calvin Sharpe of the Penske Corporation was president of the board. (Click on DWDB 990 2009 to view 2009 filing.)
Moore described her purpose in establishing the DESC .
- Councilwoman Saunteel Jenkins speaks at earlier Council session as Council members Gary Brown and Charles Pugh listen. The three, along with Ken Cockrel, Jr. and James Tate, later voted for the PA 4 consent agreement.
“As President and CEO, I can be nimble and effective,” she told the Council. “Expenses will be lower. I can go out and seek public and private funding more easily.”
She also said they would no longer have to pay city wages and benefits to employees. Councilwoman Saunteel Jenkins pointed out the loss of city workers will jeopardize the stability of the city’s pension fund, and Councilwoman Watson called it “union-busting.”
Institute for Population Health, Inc.
After finishing with the DWDD group Aug. 7, City Council turned to Loretta Davis, her legal counsel, COO Chris Brown, Detroit Finance Department Director Cheryl Johnson, and Jean Chabut, Deputy Director of the Michigan Department of Human Services (seen in photo at top).
- Deputy Auditor General Mark Lockridge (r) addresses Council Aug. 7, 2012 as Council Fiscal Analyst Irvin Corley (l) listens.
The questionable dealings first came to light when city Deputy Auditor General Mark Lockridge began routine final audits of the departments Bing planned to close.
He told Council July 31 that Davis had transferred federal funding for the Department to a private account for the newly-created “Institute for Population Health, Inc.” (IPH). COO Brown said he authorized the IPH deposit.
Davis incorporated the private IPH, which has not yet been certified by the IRS as a non-profit, in May, 2012. She filed restated Articles of Incorporation on June 20, 2012. She met with Health Department workers May 31 to tell them they would be laid off and could re-apply for their jobs with the IPH, but that fewer jobs would be available.
- DHWP Deputy Director Betsy Pash and Director Loretta Davis at Council session May 16, 2012. Pash is now COO of the IPH; she worked previously at the MDCH.
Councilwoman Brenda Jones told Davis Aug. 7, “I specifically asked you where the seed money for the IPH was coming from, and you told me it was the state. “
Davis countered that she thought Jones was only referring to state grants, during a previous Council meeting May 16.
Outraged, Jones said, “Everybody keeps telling us, ‘oh well, it was a mistake.’ I’m sick of that. The citizens of Detroit are continuing to pay for your mistakes.”
(Links to earlier VOD articles on the DHWP and the IPH which detail the IPH’s origin are at end of story.)
- Herman Kiefer Health Complex. Detroiters have been coming there for years to get birth and death records, but officials said Aug. 7 they want to move that division downtown, where there is no parking.
At the hearing Aug. 7, Lockridge said Davis had deposited at least $50,080 into the IPH account with Fifth Third Bank. He reported that the funds were restored to the DHWP account after the OAG’s discovery. But he said a petty cash fund containing $1800, plus an additional $1,000 from Vital Records receipts as of July 30, has not been accounted for (click on AG DDHWP to read Lockridge’s written report which was given to Council. It also details which federally-funded divisions Davis plans to keep under the DHWP designation).
Plans for the total transfer of the department have also changed since Lockridge’s discovery.
Davis told Council May 16 that she planned to strip the department of $54.3 million in federal and state grant funding and $10.2 million in fee revenues, all of it to go to the IPH, lay off 400 workers, and bust the union.
On Aug. 7, Davis said, “There are four grants from the federal government to the City of Detroit that we are not asking to be moved to the IPH. DHWP will still administer those. The state has agreed to contract with the IPH for state grants.”
Davis claimed no conflict of interest is involved because she will be getting only one paycheck for working as DHWP director and IPH CEO. Lockridge’s written report shows that the DHWP plans to pay her salary and that of three other DHWP/IPH employees, using revenues from sources including Vital Records fees.
Meanwhile, the IPH website at http://ipophealth.org/ still lists openings for numerous jobs that previously were occupied by City of Detroit workers, including those in federally-funded divisions such as WIC and Lead Poisoning.
Workers are to be hired through T.J. Adams Staffing Services, with a website at http://www.tj-adams.com/index_page.htm. That site says T.J. Adams is associated with a national health care-related private entity, RBJ Enterprises, LLC, with a site at http://rbjenterprises.com/company.htm.
T J. Adams says on the IPH site, “All employment is strictly on at ‘at-will’ basis. If an offer of employment is tendered, and accepted, either the employer or the employee can terminate the employment relationship at any time, with or without cause, and with or without notice. This at-will employment relationship exists regardless of any other written statements, policies, or any other documents or verbal statements to the contrary.”
Jean Chabut, who is the Michigan Department of Community Health’s Deputy Director of Public Health Administration, and chairs the non-profit Michigan Institute for Public Health, supported Davis at the meeting.
“We have needed to work with the Detroit Health and Wellness Department on a number of organizational difficulties, including fraud in the WIC [federally funded Women, Infants, and Children] program,” Chabut said. “There have been many performance issues and we believe the IPH will permit greater efficiency.”
Again, she produced no documentation of her allegations.
“So the baby has been split up but still has the same mother,” Council member Kwame Kenyatta said sarcastically. “You could not resolve the problem without splitting the child and leaving the mother with the child? Nothing here is fraudulent or a conflict of interest, right?”
Chabut began her career with the Detroit Health Department, where she worked for 17 years and became director of its nursing division.
She, Cynthia Taueg, and Vernice Davis Anthony, who also began their careers at the city health department, all sit on the board of the IPH, with Taueg as chair.
Chabut and Davis claimed the Health Department has always had private workers, employed by the Southeastern Michigan Health Authority (SEMHA). However, according to AFSCME Local 457 officials, when Chabut began work there, there was no SEMHA. They said they have fought the intr0duction of SEMHA and privately-contracted workers from the 1980’s to the present date.
The day before he died of a massive heart attack on April 16, 1994, Local 457 President Al Phillips met with Taueg to discuss the removal of SEMHA, after also raising the matter with Labor Relations and City Council earlier in the week.