Detroit voters chose a new majority Tuesday for the school board that governs the largest district in Michigan, where about 82% of students are Black (2022-23 enrollment data). Five of the seven seats were up, and the people who win them will decide which neighborhood schools close next and whether Superintendent Nikolai Vitti keeps his job. Results were not final when this was written.
Thirty-four candidates ran for four full four-year terms and one two-year seat, the biggest field since the Detroit Public Schools Community District was created in 2016. Board President LaTrice McClendon and Vice President Corletta Vaughn did not seek reelection. Two members appointed last year, Steve Bland and Bessie Harris, did.
The fight is over closures. The district has said that 19 small schools do not bring in enough enrollment revenue to cover their costs. It has already closed four of them (Ann Arbor Trail Magnet School, J.E. Clark Preparatory Academy, Catherine Blackwell Institute and Greenfield Union Elementary-Middle School) and plans to close Thurgood Marshall Elementary-Middle School at the end of this school year. The district serves about 50,000 students and has roughly 72,000 seats, the gap that drives the math.
Vitti has said that landing on the small-schools list does not mean a school is headed for closure. Not every candidate agrees with him. Four who answered Chalkbeat’s questionnaire said they want him fired or pushed to resign. Five activists from the group By Any Means Necessary, or BAMN, ran together as a slate to remove him and stop the closures. They argue that “there is enough money to keep the schools open” and that the state should cover debts left by emergency management. A Wayne State political science professor told Chalkbeat the at-large system is “the most unpredictable and chaotic of all electoral systems.”
Voters felt it. One retiree told Chalkbeat: “I really wish there was someone or something to help me so I just voted for the names I recognized.” Another said students “are really far behind where they have to be and can’t read.”
The board can hire or fire the superintendent, but the Detroit Financial Review Commission must approve a termination. The new board will also face chronic absenteeism, falling enrollment and the end of funding for reading interventionists that came out of a literacy lawsuit settlement.
In a district this Black, every closure lands on Black families, and the money meant to help children read is running out just as the board turns over. The people elected Tuesday should answer for both before they vote to close another building, and say plainly what they will do about reading.
The new members take their seats in January.
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