Open Letter to BHSD and its school board: fight for democratic ideals

To the BHSD schoolboard:

Tonight your meeting presumably will be conducted in accord with Open Meetings Act. http://www.legislature.mi.gov/Publications/OpenMtgsFreedom.pdf

I commend you for that, of course.

The logic underpinning the Open Meetings Act and the Freedom of Information Act is the logic underpinning democracy writ large. To not abide by and support these principles would contradict, I think, everything we try to teach our children and the principles that have organized the country since its creation.

These principles, I believe, are non-negotiable and sacrosanct.

I believe even those in the District who feel strongly that BHSD has made serious mistakes in the past are on record of vigorously supporting the Open Meetings Act and the Freedom of Information Act.

Thanks in part to citizens like yourself -- who offer your time and money to serve -- and thanks too, to those that fully engage the sometimes difficult follow rules of said -- I have the great luxury of knowing, tonight, that I can, for example, comment on your policies and decisions. I can seek to influence you -- in the open. I can seek and gain information, even if at points I might need to follow the sometimes arduous path of the Freedom of Information Act.

It is because I have that luxury that I will ask tonight for you to join me in condemning publicly the actions of those in the state legislature who -- in trying to codify the EAA (the Educational Achievement Authority) -- tried to undermine those principles, and to join me in urging them in the strongest possible terms to find another path forward as they work out EAA legislation in time for the post New Year's media cycle.

The EAA, as most of you now know, is the preferred operational entity of the state and Governor Snyder to take over low performing schools throughout Michigan under the auspices of the state reform office (2009). He has been advocating its expansion even before it came into existence in Detroit where it oversees 12 schools. His advocacy has remained steadfast despite numerous problems at the EAA.  The EAA -- and its enormous support from the Broad Foundation -- was at the center of his educational reform strategy in 2012 that was designed to "unbundle" geographically defined school districts like our own. Admirably, Rob Glass called for resistance to this and the voice of Bloomfield did much to preserve what many understand to be public education in the state.

When these legislative efforts failed, the Governor continued in "piecemeal" form, first getting an EAA bill (4369) through the House in March and then, suddenly, calling for it again last week after it had sat in the Senate for several months.

One of the many reasons the Senate balked was that Senator Hopgood and Rep Lipton, who sat on the Senate and House Education committees respectively, had to file FOIAs to get information about this entity that was going to take over a significant number of public schools.

The political horror of this can't be ignored by you. This would be equivalent to Howard Baron or Rob Herner having to file a FOIA to get information about BHSD. And I urge you all to take more than a minute to contemplate that scenario, as unthinkable as it might seem right now.

For many others it is the new reality.

This horror was amplified last week when the Senator Hopgood added an amendment to the EAA codification bill asking that the entity -- which, again, would be operating "public" schools -- be subject to the same Open Meetings Act and Freedom of Information Act that you/we abide by. While initially accepted, this amendment was adjusted so that the State Treasurer could determine if -- in fact -- children and parents in EAA schools now and in the future had the same rights as I (currently do).

This is offensive and dangerous in the extreme.

http://www.mlive.com/education/index.ssf/2013/12/michigan_senate_approves_plan_1.html

As it stands, with the EAA bill "stalled" while behind the scenes deals can take place, we don't know if this entity charged with public education will be asked to abide by our principles or if they will be allowed to undermine those principles.

I trust you can see what is a perpetual slippery slope in democracy in America.

If we quietly or even "diplomatically" abjure the rights of other parents, citizens, and their children  then our rights are at stake regardless of our longstanding position of political power.

We are not exempt.

And whatever political influence that was exerted to keep Pontiac open while Inkster and Saginaw Buena Vista closed last spring was not lost on the rest of the state who see it as a matter of special "privilege." If I am not mistaken -- and no one from BHSD or its board have convinced me or tried to convince me I am wrong about anything so far -- the State Superintendent was threatening Oakland County last week that that "special" influence was at risk.

You will recall that the initial HB6004 (the first EAA bill) would have allowed our property to be inventoried and taken by the EAA under the auspices of the state reform agency. You can be sure that effort to garner property will come back under this strange public/private partnership that is the EAA. Perhaps, too, you will recall the discussions with local Senators guaranteeing a cap of 50 schools "forever" that has now disappeared, probably forever.

But all that is merely a matter of simple political pragmatism.

What is at stake here, again, is a set of core principles and public education itself. What is at stake is nothing less than the values you choose to exemplify for the children of BHSD -- including mine.

Many are, indeed, children of what some call "privilege." Let us show them, then, that to the extent some can be termed privileged that privilege has been used historically by many in a comparable position to lead, and to lead for the good of all.

You did it before in December 2012 and you can do it again. The repetition is tiring, but such is the nature of "piecemeal" struggle.

Thank you.