Dear students, faculty, personnel, and allies at EMU,

We, the elected members of the Detroit Board of Education are stripped of all authority. We have been under emergency management for five years. During that time, academics have declined exponentially for our students, more than half of our schools have been closed and our debt to the State that created it is more than triple what it had been before the takeover.

Half of the remaining schools open in Detroit are charter schools that drag children all over the city while their neighborhood schools close and are left to vandals and real estate speculators. Our best schools have been closed and turned over to charters, despite the wishes of the community.

Fifteen of our schools, most of them newly built, were taken out from Detroit Public Schools and handed over to the racist Educational Achievement Authority. It is a separate and unequal “statewide” school district with only Detroit in it. It fails students who have no alternatives due to transportation and advocacy. Anyone who is unable to get out of these kiddie prisons is forced into the EAA schools. While Detroit taxpayers pay for the bonds for them, we have no control over them. Outside speculators make a profit off our loss and a generation of students has been cheated out of their birthright of a decent education. The EAA has 99% African American students.

Why are we telling you? Because Eastern Michigan University holds the inter local agreement with Detroit Public Schools for this scandalous Jim Crow school district. In only three short years of its existence, millions have already gone missing and people associated with it are going to prison for bribery and embezzlement. Yet, it has not been shut down.

The EAA is not in any white communities. Its student body is 99% African American.

The chancellor, Veronica Conforme, has refused to respond to the American Civil Liberties Union’s Freedom of Information Requests on scandalous contracts given to Futures, a contractor they hired to provide Special Education Services and instead took millions and provided nothing. The previous chancellor left without explanation after millions went missing. This would NEVER be allowed in a district where school board members have the right to govern. This is allowed because the CORRUPT emergency manager law prevails.

You can shut it down.

Here’s how.

Help get the word out on social media, through student networks.

Help us take back our schools and help DPS students reach their potential after getting set back by EMU and Governor Snyder.

Please attend the meeting of The Board of Regents on December 8th, 2015. Attached is the letter regarding the EAA. Beloved students, this is a terribly unequal school experiment that your University is enabling. This is your moment. You have the power to SHUT IT DOWN!

In Solidarity,

Elena M. Herrada, District 2 DPS board member
Herman Davis, chairman
Lamar Lemmons
Ida Short
Tawanna Simpson
Juvette Hawkins Williams
Patricia Singleton
Rev. David Murray

EMU agreement with EAA (2)