DPS (Update: Stephen Henderson Detroit Free Press Editorial Page Editor on a Decade of Detriot Educational Discourse)

Stephen Henderson: Roberts leaves DPS - so now what?

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Detroit Public Schools Emergency Manager Roy Roberts outlines his 2012-'13 budget at a public hearing at Renaissance High School in Detroit on Wednesday, June 27, 2012. / Patricia Beck/Detroit Free Press

A few years ago, early in Robert Bobb’s tenure as emergency manager for Detroit Public Schools, he sat me down and showed me what it would mean to balance the school system’s books.

Bobb said if he spent only what the district took in each year, and set enough aside to retire the debt and pay back past overspending, the district would operate essentially as a warehouse for city kids. There would be an average of 60 kids per class, with roaming principals who were “in charge” of multiple schools. There might be vast sections of the city that didn’t have any elementary schools; and transportation would not be any more available than it is now.

The math, Bobb said, was simple. Any accountant could line up the zeros in the right place.

It was the consequences of that math that were unacceptable. The district was too boxed in — by its declining revenues and debt burden — to reasonably dig its way out of the financial hole.

Bobb said, as a result, he would leave DPS in better shape (racking up less annual deficit than it had been), but the overall debt would be larger and the solution to the long-term problems would still be somewhere in the future.

So here we are, two years later, watching the second emergency manager, Roy Roberts, pack it up.

And substantively, the long-term picture is not much different. Roberts, without question, has been more diligent about cutting expenses and re-scaling the district to reflect a smaller population. He has restructured the debt so that it sucks less money annually out of the budget, but that means larger overall indebtedness.

But even he says the district is a few years away from alleviating the financial emergency that precipitated an emergency manager in the first place. And what will remain once that happens? The district is in such a shambles already that it’s hard to imagine what will be left.

The real tragedy here has been the failure of the state — which first stepped into the failing district more than a decade ago — to see DPS’ struggles as anything beyond an inability to pay the bills.

The truth is that the district’s setup doesn’t work. It owes too much money, much of it to retirees whose benefits are, and should be, protected. (It’s not remotely fair to take pension or health care benefits from employees who were promised those things while they worked.)

And it is still losing kids, which is like death, financially, for school districts. Unlike cities, which can raise revenue in a number of ways, school districts get all of their money based on pupil count, so every family that leaves Detroit or puts their kids in private or the expanding charter schools takes money away from DPS.

As Bobb said, you can easily cut spending to match, but at some point, you reach a point of unsustainability as far as service delivery (actually educating kids) is concerned.

I don’t blame Roberts, who is a fine man and a taut, highly competent manager, for where we are.

But someone at the state level, which is where this system has been managed since 2009, needs to have come up with a bigger-picture solution. Bobb at one point suggested a GM bankruptcy-style fix that would have split the district in two: one small district that would be given wide latitude to retire the debt over time, and another, “new” district that would be given a fresh start.

Practicality might have been the biggest obstacle to that plan, but the idea should at least have sparked some discussion about alternative models.

It didn’t. Roberts has been trying to make the books balance, while the state cheers his efforts. Meanwhile, on the sidelines, the school district’s local elected leaders have been squealing for a chance to get control back, but they have no credible plan for a more stable financial model. (And frankly, it was irresponsible elected leadership that plunged the district into trouble in the first place.)

There has to be a better way. The sorry state of the city’s public schools is a huge drain on Detroit’s overall success, and remains a deeply repulsive incentive for families to move in, or stay. Fixing that ought to be a real priority for anyone who’s touting a better tomorrow for Detroit.

The model for city schools is broken. It’s time for someone to come up with a new one.

Stephen Henderson is editorial page editor for the Free Press and the host of “American Black Journal,” which airs at 1 p.m. Sundays on Detroit Public Television. Follow Henderson on Twitter@ShendersonFreep, or contact him at 313-222-6659 orshenderson600@freepress.com.