Senators deciding on legislation that would provide more than $700 million to help Detroit Public Schools address debt and restructure heard testimony from education, community, and business leaders today.
The people who went before the state Senate Government Operations Committee didn’t just bring information, they brought stories.
“You have no more important job,” Dan Varner told senators. “And we as a collective society have no greater responsibility than to educate our kids."
Varner is the perhaps unlikely CEO of Excellent Schools Detroit. He didn’t start his career focusing on education.
“I got into this work, really, because I was a criminal defense attorney,” said Varner.
He says he saw people with potential, but failed by the education system, turning to a life of crime. He says if the state doesn’t invest smartly in Detroit Public Schools, it will spend more money on the prison system. He asked senators to crack down on failing charter schools by creating a commission that decides where charter and DPS schools open to make sure money isn’t wasted.
Bill Milliken, a board member of New Detroit, testified with a group of business leaders.
He says while in China trying encourage investment in Detroit, someone responded saying, ‘I hear the schools are in disarray.”
“The world is watching,” said Milliken.
Students also traveled to Lansing. Their goal is to break stereotypes. They say they feel lawmakers see statistics of failure, and don’t see them as the people with big dreams that they are.
“Their kids don’t have to deal with this,” said Imani Harris, a student at Renaissance High School. "I didn’t have an English teacher for six months… I don’t think they realize how serious this is.”
