EAA (Update)

Duggan resigns from EAA school board

I don’t ‘want to be a distraction,’ he says

By Matt Helms and Chastity Pratt Dawsey Detroit Free Press Staff Writers

   Mike Duggan, the former Detroit Medical Center CEO who along with Wayne County Sheriff Benny Napolean are front-runners in the race to become Detroit’s next mayor, resigned Friday from the board of the Education Achievement Authority, the controversial school district the state set up to reform Michigan’s most troubled schools.

   In a letter to Carol Goss, the chairwoman of the statewide district that targets the lowest-performing 5% of schools, Duggan said Friday that his role as a volunteer board member “is drawing the EAA into the middle of a heated mayoral campaign. As long as I remain on the board, some will be motivated to try to keep the EAA engulfed in as much controversy as possible.”

   Duggan told Goss, who is president and CEO of the Skill-man Foundation, that he believes in the mission and goals of the EAA but doesn’t “want to be a distraction from these very important efforts.”

   Duggan was secretary of the 11-member board of the EAA, set up by Gov. Rick Snyder to fix student-performance problems at the weakest schools in the state. Duggan was one of Snyder’s seven appointees to the board.

   A bill in the state Senate proposes expanding the district to include up to 35 more schools. So far, its only 15 schools are in Detroit.

   The reform district has been controversial, amid charges from critics that it undermines the Detroit Public Schools and is unproven academically.

   The EAA competes with DPS for students and funding. However, DPS took out $12 million in loans since the fall and gave the money to the EAA to keep the state school district afloat financially.

   It was clear that Duggan was taking political heat for being a member of the EAA board, which did not know about the loans. At a forum for mayoral candidates earlier this week, one resident submitted a written question asking Duggan how he could campaign to become a mayor opposed to an emergency manager for Detroit while sitting on the board of the EAA that is getting loans with help from DPS, a system that is run by an emergency manager.

   Duggan conceded that the question has been raised frequently on the campaign trail but told the Free Press he does not believe stepping down from the EAA will impact his bid for mayor.

   “People who are against the EAA were against me last week and they’ll still be against me — whether I’m on the board is not going to change the dynamics,” Duggan said. “I wanted the attacks on the EAA that were being generated in the mayoral campaign not to impact the EAA. They have plenty of challenges already. They didn’t need a mayoral campaign on top of it.”

   Warren resident Mary Wood, who regularly follows EAA meetings, said she was the one who informed Duggan last week about the money DPS borrowed and passed on to the EAA.

   “The board may not have known, but it was their business to know,” she said. “I think he’s taking himself out of the hot seat right now.”

   Goss said Duggan will be missed because he asked tough questions about how the EAA operates.

   “I think he was and is really committed to trying to figure out how to educate kids better and he really believed in the EAA,” Goss said. “Maybe he thought the best way to support the EAA now is to not draw it into this political battle.”

   John Covington, chancellor for the EAA, said he had not received any notice of the resignation as of Friday afternoon, therefore he could not comment.

   Contact Matt Helms: 313-222-1450 or at mhelms@freepress.com  

Mike Duggan