Governor Rick Snyder’s new corporate martial law is in effect and it didn’t take long to see the effect of it’s implementation. In a report issued today by Reuters,
The emergency manager appointed to put Detroit’s troubled public school system on a firmer financial footing said on Thursday he was sending layoff notices to all of the district’s 5,466 unionized employees.
The district is unlikely to eliminate all the teachers. Last year, it sent out 2,000 notices and only a fraction of employees were actually laid off. But the notices are required by the union’s current contract with the district. Any layoffs under this latest action won’t take effect until late July.
In the meantime, Robert Bobb, the district’s emergency manager, said that he planned to exercise his power as emergency manager to unilaterally modify the district’s collective bargaining agreement with the Federation of Teachers starting May 17, 2011.
The real interesting issue is the background of Mr. Robert Bobb, himself. According to Forbes, Bobb is a graduate of the, Broad Foundation’s Superintendent Academy. The Broad foundation is extremely involved in privatization and “school choice”. So Broad has an inside man in Michigan’s government to push their flagrant, regressive agenda. They currently pay Mr. Bobb a significant sum of money, along with the Kellogg foundation. This is on top of Robert Bobb’s government salary of 280K.
Mr. Robert Bobb was appointed by the previous Democratic governor of Michigan, but this manager was hamstrung until after the passage of Governor Rick Snyder’s “Emergency Financial Manager” bill. Now this manager has sweeping authority for the eradication union contracts etc. In fact, Robert Bobb is proposing Charter Schools across this Detroit district. A total of 16,000 children from 41 closing schools will be effected.
This is very suspicious to me. This seems to be a coordinated attack on public schools and an intentional push to further the agenda of Tea Party regressives intent on eliminating unions and collective bargaining, and the agenda of a billion dollar foundation intent on privatization of education.
