Detroit Schools brace for closings due to absent teachers

While the fate of teachers unions hangs in the balance in the Supreme Court-which on Monday is hearing arguments in Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, about the legality of forced union dues-some frustrated teachers in Detroit are taking matters into their own hands with the city’s largest yet “sickout”.

Aside from building inspections, Duggan has no control over the school district, and neither does the board of education. Twenty school closures were estimated at the time, but by this morning that number increased to at least 60.

A group of over a hundred teachers, joined by parents and children, protest Monday Jan. 11, 2016, in Detroit.

Teachers are upset about pay and the districts lack of finances. The 100-school district is run by an emergency manager appointed by Republican Gov. Rick Snyder. But the strategy, in which so many teachers call in ill that classes must be cancelled, has raised some local officials’ ire – and the union’s own push for change.

School officials anticipate reopening the schools on Tuesday.

“Our goal is to get the Detroit Public School to be successful”. He said they understand teachers are doing it to ensure the safety of their kids.

Sixty-four of the district’s 97 schools were closed on Monday morning, Detroit Public Schools spokeswoman Michelle Zdrodowski said.

Mayor Mike Duggan will visit the schools with health and building officials to ascertain the conditions of the schools, after several teachers complained that facilities were infested with rodents and covered with mold.

DFT interim president Ivy Bailey said the adverse conditions inside Detroit schools are nothing new.

Duggan would not identify the school where he saw the dead mouse, but Hecker said it was Spain Elementary.

“I’ve been a resident of Detroit for 30 years … my daughter grew up in the neighborhood, went to Detroit public schools, and the conditions increasingly, especially since 2007 with the financial crisis, have been terrible”, he told the Guardian. And how can students learn when their teachers are constantly staging protest sickouts?

Darnell Earley, Detroit Public Schools’ emergency manager, said in a statement, “Given the reality of the District’s financial distress, it is becoming clearer every day that the only way that we are going to be able to address these serious issues in any way is through an investment in DPS by the mi legislature”. “We are dedicated to keeping safe and good, clean operating conditions”.

“But to me, really all of those are inexcusable because what I think we see happening in the district in Detroit is really an indictment of the sort of heavy-handed power from the executive branch without any checks or balances”. “We understand and share their frustration”.

But before those penalties can be imposed, the district must file a formal complaint with the Michigan Employment Relations Commission.