Back to School! -- while they are still there

It's that time already ! Back to school!

Parents should have the new school clothes, laptops, folders, etc. Get ready to capture the flush on the faces of new kindergarteners and young parents on that first day.

How exciting!

In Rick Snyder's Michigan, however, it is a little difficult to get in the spirit of things, especially for parents in Oakland County who have long relied on top schools to educate their kids, provide a sense of community, and, of course, property values.

I know kids regress over the summer. So here is a recap of what happened last year and through the summer. The Governor -- as you recall -- called for the "unbundling" of geographically defined School Districts (including Birmingham, Troy and Bloomfield) in 2011. He tagged school voucher guru and constitutional lawyer Richard MaCllellan to craft the "Oxford Proposals" that described "Anywhere, Anytime, Anyplace" education.

Districts without borders! Or, to put that another way, no Districts at all.

While community college drop out and chair of the Senate Education Committee, Senator PhilPavlov, now likes to call the Proposals "just a 300 page report," they actually sketched a whole new educational scheme for Michigan and provided the logic for several pieces of legislation all designed to erase those pesky old boundaries and make space for a host of private vendors -- the cyber charters, for example, that advertise on Patch.

Even though some local representatives, like Chuck Moss, were "torn" about whether to get rid of Districts like Birmingham or Bloomfield or not so that we could quickly save "Hiland Park[sic]" the legislation failed in lame duck (December 2012).

Consequently, Mr. McClellan told Lisa Lyons, daughter of former Lt. Governor Dick Posthumus and Chair of the House Education Committee, to take care of all this "piecemeal." That means without public legislative debate, quietly, patiently, slowly. A slow strangulation. Saving "Hiland Park" could wait for political efficiency and ruthlessness. Rep. Lyons got her chance to show her stuff when Inkster closed, comparing the teachers there to fattened "hogs" who needed "slaughtering."

Indeed, Mr. McClellan developed a secret "skunks works" team to craft schools that  could work for $5,000 a year per pupil, some $18,000 under what it takes to educate the Governor's kids at Greenhills.

But some internal squabbling led The Detroit News (usually a reliable ally) and Chad Livengood to break the secret skunks story. Public school matters should be handled in public.

Even the Governor agreed -- had to get that story out of the way as it interrupted relentless positivism. So: he handed the "reform" task to Mike Flanagan, State Superintendent, so the project would gain some legitimacy. Flanagan immediately posted a goofy Youtube video to ask everyone in the state if they had any ideas on how to use technology in education so we can enter the "21st century."

Why? Don't know. It is possible that like 90% of education decision makers he hasn't been near a student or a classroom in years.

At any rate, after his Youtube debut, Mr. Flanagan got down to business. In the spring, he compiled a list of "failing" Districts. 55 of them, all in debt. Two, in particular, looked like low hanging fruit: Saginaw Buena Vista and Inkster. He then helped craft school district "Dissolution" laws.

"Unbundling" had gone out of fashion so the Governor needed a new term, hence "dissolution." I like it. More accurate.

 Initially, the dissolution laws were going to apply to the whole state.

But, uh, oh. District number 3 on the list was Pontiac. And if you dissolve Pontiac those 5,000 kids (11,000 if you count all the kids enrolled in assorted charters and private schools) would be relocated to other bordering Districts including Bloomfield. BHSD, as you know, has been rather busy downsizing for 12 years and is the middle of moving 10-12 graders to Lahser while the old Andover site is renovated. 9th graders go to the Hickory Grove campus. This will be logistically challenging and absorbing, oh, 1,000 kids at Thanksgiving might be hard. Magically, the dissolution laws found a number: 2500. If a District has over 2500 kids it is "too big to fail." This legislation took a couple of days, but Pontiac was temporarily spared so the legislative bodies could kill Inkster and Buena Vista and still get a summer vacation comparable to the one they think teachers shouldn't have.

But piecemeal work is never done. The Governor's review team two days ago Pontiac in a "state of emergency" (who isn't?). This means that in a few days the Governor will appoint an emergency manager, presumably one already handpicked. This EM will, no doubt, have the power to dissolve the district no matter how many kids need to be absorbed by neighboring Districts. No one knows for sure. Closing schools to improve education is increasingly popular, but what a school EM can or can't do in this situation is still without precedent.

We can make some informed guesses, however, based on the Governor's relentlessly positive pattern.

He wants Districts gone. That includes your District Birmingham, Bloomfield, and Troy. He always has. And he has worked carefully to do it. Had the EAA been anywhere near as successful as he hoped he wouldn't run in to the current political roadblocks like Oakland County. You see it is now pretty clear that the Governor's focus on the EAA was not just to help kids in Detroit but to act as a placeholder for failing Districts while he gradually eroded funding and support for functioning Districts.

Nasty business this.

The takeaway? Every District is now in survival mode. The state has literally declared war on public education and is asking all children to go back to school under these circumstances, not knowing if their school or their District will be around in 3 years.

I was calculating Bloomfield would last another five. Now I think 3.

And, to date, no locally elected politician has the decency or courage to talk in public about the largest social engineering scheme the state has seen in years.