Dishonorable Acts
This week the Honorable Judge Steven Rhodes held a public meeting on the state of Detroit Public Schools. It was a dishonorable performance by the Judge. He has no sense of the depth of anger in the community over the daily abuse of our children in schools stripped of any capacity to provide nurturing and love. He appeared unable to grasp the concerns expressed over the destruction of locally elected democratic control, the subsequent lack of accountability for finances, and the impact of the state targeted hostility toward teachers.
What he does understand is that he does not want to be called an Emergency Manager. Rhodes, whose entire career has been based on judging the letter of the law, refused to own up to his title and its legacy of white supremacist, corrupt, and incompetent rule. Instead, he signed his documents as “Transition Manager,” dodging the title Emergency Manager. No such title of Transition Manager exists in the legislation from which he claims his authority.
Throughout the meeting community members objected to his efforts to distance himself from the responsibility he personally carries for acting as an agent of the State Legislature. Emergency Management laws have been used to systematically dismantle public education for nearly two decades. Emergency Management is the essential tool for pushing toward the privatization of education, while simultaneously destroying local capacity to improve and protect the development of our children.
One consistent line of questioning for Rhodes during the meeting was for him to acknowledge and respect the locally elected school board. This questioning was so persistent that Rhodes moved from saying he had “no plans” to meet with them to agreeing to meet with the Board if they were “civil.”
After the meeting, he said he will meetwith the board in private. Michele Zdrodowski wrote a note to the Detroit News saying, “Per Judge Rhodes, the meeting will be private so that they may have an open and frank discussion.” Zdrodowski asserted the session can be closed under the state’s Open Meetings Act because no decisions will be made. “This is an information sharing meeting only, and Judge Rhodes is not asking the Board to take any action and therefore the public meetings act does not apply.”
This is a novel interpretation of the Open Meetings Act. All public bodies are required to hold open meetings except for very specific reasons. They include discussing discipline, real estate transactions, conferring with an attorney about litigation, discussing material privileged under state and federal law, and considering employment applications under certain circumstances. There is no exemption for “information sharing.”
Elected School Board President Herman Davis said that no more than 5 of the 11 members would meet at once so as not to violate the law.
“Detroit school board members, unlike the parties who make decisions about expenditures, openings and closings of schools, letting off millions of dollars of contracts, are subject to the Open Meetings Act,” Elena Herrada said. “We will not meet with the emergency manager in a closed meeting.”
Rhodes does not grasp that the call of the community was not simply to hold a meeting. It was for a return to democratically elected control. If Rhodes had any integrity, he would meet openly and publicly with the board and acknowledge the responsibility of the State for the financial crisis it has created. He should then give the elected school board his resignation as Emergency Manager and ask them to forward it to the Governor. Anything less is dishonorable and complicated in a legal fiction that assaults the most basic values of democracy.