Snyder joins officials calling for an end to teacher “sickouts”

The district’s update on Facebook put the number of closed schools at more than 60 Monday.

Teacher and former union president Steve Conn calls the news “great”.

Calling teachers “the glue that holds this system together”, DFT interim president Ivy Bailey has not endorsed the sick-outs, but suggested that those criticizing teachers for their protest should see schools’ “deplorable conditions”, such as rat infestations.

The Detroit district with 46,000 students has been in turmoil, struggling with millions of dollars in debt, poor morale among staff and families that have other school choices for their kids.

Emergency Manager Earley, who was appointed by Gov. Rick Snyder a year ago, says that the sick-outs will destroy his efforts to correct Detroit Public Schools’ financial situation. Over a month ago, three schools in Detroit were closed after teachers called in sick with an ailment they call “Snyder flu”. He says there are other avenues to call attention to those issues that don’t hurt students. (For the fourth time in a row, Detroit came in dead last among big-city schools on the NAEP exam, known as the “nation’s report card.”) But how can the schools get their act together when teachers are so miserable and so much of the operating budget is devoted to paying back debts? Ingrid Jacques, an editorial page editor at The Detroit News, has suggested that the legislature “consider a future for Detroit schools that doesn’t include the teachers union”.

“Unfortunately”, the statement continues, “obtaining that support becomes more challenging with each closure of a school due to a teacher sick-out”.

Mayor Mike Dugan will visit the schools with city health and buildings officials on Tuesday morning after complaints from the district teachers union that some have mold and are infested with rodents.

“Based on what we find, the city of Detroit will take whatever enforcement action is necessary to make sure all Detroit public schools are compliant with all health and building codes”, Duggan said in a written statement. Nonetheless, she said, the district is troubled by the wave of teacher absences.

To the union, that was tantamount to blaming teachers instead of addressing the problem.

There are 100 schools in the district. Whiston did not say when the meeting would take place. Earley has said during previous protests that teachers shouldn’t allow “differences of opinion or disagreements to interfere with the education of our students”. In an open letter to the Detroit public schools emergency manager, Darnell Earley, who blasted teachers for the sickout protestslast week, fourth-grade teacher Pam Namyslowski said pupils had been “set up to fail in every way”.