LANSING (WKZO-AM/FM) — Gov. Rick Snyder has decided to move the School Reform Office back to the Department of Education, after the SRO, while under Snyder’s control, made a mess of efforts to reform the state’s worst-performing schools.
The governor was initially charged with a power grab by moving the office to the Department of Technology, Management and Budget. He felt the democratically-controlled Michigan Board of Education wasn’t doing enough, particularly in the city of Detroit, to improve the schools.
But the governor may have discovered the hard way that such problems are not so easily resolved.
The SRO set off protests in communities all over the state by contacting parents by letter, telling them to start making plans to move their kids to different schools because their school was going to be closed.
It not only sparked anger, it also drew lawsuits from Kalamazoo, Saginaw and Detroit schools. That’s when Snyder intervened again, handing the process back to School Supt. Brian Whiston and the Department of Education to oversee.
Now Snyder is handing back the SRO too, signing an executive order to make it happen.
It’s not surprising that Snyder chose a Friday before Independence Day to make the move when most people will be too distracted to notice.
It’s not clear what impact the order will have on the pending lawsuits. One claim in those suits was that moving the SRO from Education to DTMB was unconstitutional, and that when it made the move it lost its authority to close schools.
But both suits also questioned a number of terms used by the SRO to judge the performance of schools as being unconstitutionally vague and not properly defined.
MIRS News contacted Clark Hill, the law firm representing the Kalamazoo and Saginaw districts in their joint lawsuit. A spokesperson said they viewed the executive order as a positive move, but said they had just learned about the executive order and had not had a chance to evaluate the impact of the executive order, and would need to check with their clients before deciding a next step, and they had already left for the holiday weekend.
