When the Governor closes a door, another DOOR opens so skunks can get in

Despite a number of setbacks and growing opposition, Governor Snyder remains committed to "Anywhere, Anytime, Anyplace, Anyway" education.

(Pssst...that means no Bloomfield School District or Bloomfield property values....pass it on...some Oakland Republicans are getting the idea)

The most dramatic of these setbacks -- in addition to the December 2012 lame duck legislation that failed -- was the notorious "skunks" works project.
Following December 2012, the Governor's top education advisor, Richard McClellan, told Lisa Lyons to defund schools "piecemeal" to make way for reforms. That is, no more public debate -- just "starve the beast" of public education. In the meantime, McClellan set up a "skunks" works project outside official scrutiny to create bargain basement schools which could -- in his imagination -- satisfy constitutional demands to fund public education by spending 5k per student, less than what most here pay for travel soccer in a given year.

 Even The Mackinac Center Gazette -- otherwise known as  The Detroit News --cried foul. (Rep. Lyons, by the way, is keeping pace -- asking public schools to pay for epi-pens -- that is, forcing public education lobbyists to seem to be "against" life saving devices if the state won't fund yet one more unfunded mandate).

Creepy, creepy, creepy.

Apparently, though, the Governor and his men think enough political time has passed to bring McClellan back in to the open. The skunk smell has dissipated in the cold of the fall. We work on "dilatory" time Shakespeare's Iago says in bringing down the noble Othello.

Here is a Michigan Public Radio piece from yesterday where Mr. McClellan describes DOORS (Digitally Optimized One Room Schoolhouses -- I'm not kidding) and reiterates what he has been arguing for 30 years. Schools are broken -- including BHSD -- and so we need to stop funding them.http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/10/25/faculty-fight-universitys-link-to-con...

If you substitute BHSD for Novi here, you get a sense of where we are set politically for the future. McClellan and the Governor want us gone, digitally optimized in one room; John Austin and the state's left -- represented here by the informed Professor Arsen from Michigan State -- believe we have too much money.

Not a mention here of Hold Harmless millages and Prop A, it is just the rich and the poor, even though nobody in the state knows as much about the structure of Prop A as the good professor.

Do we have a strategic plan for this upcoming storm? The weather that is about to be spooned to us from Pontiac? The deal that we took to keep Pontiac open is not being well received in the rest of the state that saw comparable Districts shut down or taken over.

The Governor's plan to end public schools just hit another very public setback, however, despite the re-emergence of Mr. McClellan through his trap door.

Eastern Michigan University faculty are protesting loudly their university adminstration's decision to support the EAA a few years ago, the Governor's turn around District that was supposed to take over Districts like Pontiac so Districts like us wouldn't notice too much while the whole system got carved to pieces.http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/10/25/faculty-fight-universitys-link-to-con...


Inasmuch as The Mackinac Center is now starting to talk about consolidating colleges and universities and letting the state dollar follow the student (kids first!), it is perhaps time the universities, colleges and K-12 started talking a bit more.http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20131022/OPINION01/310220005/Michigan-s-higher-ed-bubble?odyssey=...

Stay calm, all is well.