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The
Michigan Socialist | News | Michigan
News
Dictatorship 101
Kilpatrick, GOP move to stop
return of democracy
By MARTIN
SCHREADER
Editor, The Michigan
Socialist
A LITTLE OVER four years ago, the
Republican-controlled Michigan State Legislature stripped the
residents of Detroit of their right to vote for the Detroit
School Board.
This move, the brainchild of then-Governor
John Engler, received support from key Democratic leaders,
including Dennis Archer and Kwame Kilpatrick, at the time
Detroit Mayor and State House Minority Leader respectively.
The original plan called for the installation
of a "reform board," composed of members hand-picked by
Engler, in consultation with the mayor and state legislature.
Also, a CEO was to be chosen by the governor, accountable only
to him.
In the four years since the imposition of the
unelected "reform board," very little has in fact been
"reformed:" most classes are still overcrowded; most schools
still need basic repairs; MEAP test scores continue to fall;
corruption and embezzlement are still rife within the district
bureaucracy.
In many respects, the only area of the school
district that has seen significant improvements and repairs
has been the ... school board offices, which were recently
remodeled and furnished with expensive leather couches and
chairs.
Needless to say, the complete failure of the
"reform board" to do anything but enrich themselves has
bolstered cries of outrage.
As the residents of Detroit come closer to the
day when they can elect a school board that will be ostensibly
accountable to the voters, these cries of outrage get louder
and clearer.
ENTER KWAME KILPATRICK. Now the mayor of
Detroit, Kilpatrick has staged what can only be described as a
cynical power grab.
In his plan, voters would be able to elect a
nine-person board that would have very limited power, while
the mayor would have the power to appoint the schools CEO.
Kilpatrick, when he presented his plan, was
clear that the intent is to prolong the disenfranchisement of
Detroit voters. "This new system," Kilpatrick said while
lobbying state legislators in Lansing, "will ensure the
reforms now under way will continue."
Under Kilpatrick's plan, the school board
would be able to review budgets (but cannot set them), monitor
student performance (but cannot create policy) and evaluate
the CEO (but cannot replace him or her).
In other words, the "elected school board"
would be little more than an advisory rubber stamp for an
unelected and unaccountable CEO, appointed by the mayor, who
would control the daily operations of the district.
Mayor Kilpatrick pitches his plan as the "best
chance" to maintain "stability" in the district. Joining him
is a chorus of politicians from both parties, many of whom
helped strip Detroit of its voting rights in 1999.
An aide to State Senate Majority Leader Dan
Sikkema (R-Wyoming) said Kilpatrick's plan "has some good
ideas."
State Representative Bill McConico
(D-Detroit), who helped Kilpatrick draft his power grab
proposal, attempted to pass off the right of Detroiters to
elect a rubber-stamp board as Lansing "providing an option."
Of course, the capitalist media chimed in
their support for the proposal.
Both the Detroit News and Free
Press, for example, have been falling over themselves to
present Kilpatrick's plan as a "compromise" meant to counter
the "'us-versus-them' mentality" coming from those who have
the nerve to demand the right to vote.
In this context, it should not come as a
surprise that these mouthpieces for the major capitalists in
the region, first and foremost the Big Three, present those
fighting for basic democratic rights as "playing politics,"
and deriding them as the "power-to-the-people crowd."
Karl Rove would be proud of these
bargain-basement hirelings.
HOWEVER, NOT ALL of those involved in the City
and state governments are keen on Kilpatrick's proposal.
The day after Kilpatrick presented his plan to
keep Detroit residents effectively disenfranchised, the City
Council voted 7-1 against the plan.
Councilwoman Kay Everett, who served on the
last elected school board, called the proposal a recipe for
"dictatorship."
Nine of the 16 members of the Detroit
delegation to the Michigan State Legislature, including all
five state senators, came out against the plan.
Even Governor Jennifer Granholm has balked at
the plan, making her signature of the proposal conditional on
attaining a "majority of support from the Detroit delegation"
-- which does not exist at this time.
In addition, community activists who have
fought to restore voting rights to Detroit residents since
1999 have called Kilpatrick's plan a "betrayal."
"The legislators should keep their promise,
but they are fearful," said Helen Moore, a spokesperson for
the Keep The Vote No Takeover Coalition. "The main issue here
is they want to make sure that Detroiters don't turn out en
masse for the presidential elections."
Sister Moore certainly has a point. All sides
in the dispute recognize that the 1999 state takeover of the
Detroit Public Schools has been the most divisive issue in the
City for the past four years.
A survey done recently by the NAACP found that
71 percent of City residents want an elected school board, and
57 percent want the board to have full power over the
district, including the power to appoint a superintendent.
The vote by Detroit residents to restore the
elected school board is scheduled for November 2004, as part
of the general election.
There is little doubt that the school board
vote will bring hundreds of thousands of voters out to the
polls that otherwise would not bother.
This mobilization of voters could easily
influence the outcome of the other election races being
settled at that time, including federal Congressional seats
and the presidency. After all, over 90 percent of Detroit
residents vote for the Democratic Party in elections.
Moving the vote from November to March 2004
would mean that mobilization would not take place.
 |
| Detroit teachers protest outside the state
Capitol in Lansing against more charter schools, March
2003. |
MAKE NO MISTAKE, the previous model for
administering the school district was not a panacea. The
elected, at-large school board was terrible at battling
corruption and bureaucratism in the district.
The elected school board was a fountain of
waste and malign neglect. Schools often went without essential
materials, basic maintenance and decent learning environments.
(All three problems persist under the "reform board.")
But it had one distinct advantage over the
existing "reform board:" the old school board was elected. The
board and its appointees, including the superintendent, were
accountable to the people of Detroit.
That difference makes the elected school board
a fundamentally better choice over both the existing structure
and the one proposed by Mayor Kilpatrick.
As such, Socialists would support the call for
a return to the democratically elected school board that was
in place prior to 1999, given a choice between it and the
other two plans.
We also join with community activists, school
workers, residents and all those fighting for the restoration
of democratic norms in the City.
The return of an elected school board is a
necessary reform, fully supportable by anyone who values
democratic rights.
At the same time, the restoration of
democratic rights also opens the door to a broader discussion
on how democratic control of the schools should look and work.
IN THE EARLY 1970s, during the wave of
"community control" that swept through the country, a new
structure had been established in Detroit that, for a while,
replaced the district-wide school board.
The basis of this structure was the Local
School Community Organization (LSCO), a body made up of
parents, teachers, school workers and, in some cases,
students.
The LSCOs controlled almost every aspect of
school functioning, from requisitioning materials to setting
curriculum.
The LSCOs met at local, regional (at the time,
the school district was divided into eight regions, called
"areas") and citywide level.
The All-Area School Community Organization was
the highest decision-making body of the district.
During the 1980s, this system was dismantled
in favor of Parent-Teacher-Student Associations and a stronger
central school board (the traditional model of a school
district).
With every step away from the LSCOs, the
school district fell further into disrepair and became more
and more corrupt -- until 1999, when the district was taken
over by the state.
We Socialists favor a return to the LSCO
system, as a basic model for building real democratic control
in the Detroit Public Schools.
Democratically-elected bodies of parents,
teachers, school workers and students, coming together to
decide how the schools, and the school district, would
function is the best and most effective way of making sure
quality education develops.
Such a system, based on real democracy,
exercised from the bottom up, would remove the justification
for a crushing bureaucracy, luxurious waste and questionable
accountability.
The money that would normally feed this
monster could then be diverted to such things as building
maintenance, hiring teachers (thus reducing class sizes) and
purchasing modern educational supplies (new books, computers,
lab equipment, etc.).
IN THE COMING election, Socialist candidates
will be running for state office across Michigan.
Unlike the Republican and Democratic parties,
the Socialist Party of Michigan stands firmly for the
restoration of democratic rights to the people of Detroit.
As candidates for state legislature, we
Socialists will demand to know what right Lansing has to strip
any resident of their basic rights.
Further, we will challenge those current state
senators and representatives who have supported stripping
Detroit residents of their rights to justify their actions to
the people themselves.
Democratic rights are not negotiable. Any
candidate who considers democracy to be a bargaining chip or a
needless luxury has no right to hold, or any business
occupying, elected
office. | 
