The DPS sickout: teachers digging their own grave?

The teachers of the Detroit Public Schools staged a “sickout” today.  You know, the sort of protest where they all called in sick, even though they weren’t, and used the day to protest against the DPS administration.  According to the Detroit News,

In a statement Wednesday afternoon, a DPS spokeswoman said 88 of the district’s 97 schools were closed due to the high volume of teacher absences, the latest in a series of sickouts in the state’s largest district.

Wednesday afternoon, the district filed a complaint in the Michigan Court of Claims seeking a restraining order and a preliminary injunction forcing teachers to end the sickouts.

Now, I could be cynical and say that the usual hardships that such de facto strikes impose on parents left with no one to watch their kids, aren’t an issue in Detroit where no one’s employed anyway, but I won’t.

I will say that the situation in Detroit is complicated.

On the one hand, these teachers are digging their own grave.  Detroit — indeed all of Michigan — has a system of Schools of Choice and charter schools.  Charter schools everyone’s familiar with, but Schools of Choice means that kids can apply to attend public schools in neighboring towns, and take their share of the state funding with them.  Now,you wouldn’t think any of the neighboring school districts would take Detroit kids, but since school funding comes largely from the state, and since Detroit kids help fill what would otherwise be empty classrooms, they do.  With respect to charter schools, unlike some states where approval is difficult, in Michigan, there is no issue around setting up a charter school.  Surprisingly, for as much as conservatives like to talk about school choice, no one seems to know about, or talk about, at least, the Michigan experience — and this has been around for over 20 years.

And parents in Detroit have been taking full advantage — the clear majority of schoolchildren — about 60% — living in Detroit attend charter schools, Schools of Choice, or parochial schools.  Are those that remain in the DPS simply dedicated to their local public school?  I would guess, though when I was reading about this back last spring I couldn’t find out much, that there are a number of factors, but that the DPS kids are more likely to have parents who can’t arrange for transportation, or who are just indifferent to their kids’ education in general.

And every such sickout, every such instance when teachers leave the classroom, is going to send all the more parents looking at their charter and other options, and, by the loss of per-student money, make the financial situation all the worse.

But at the same time, when teachers complain about building upkeep and other problems in the schools, they’re not being whiners, either.  The DPS has serious financial problems — as does any organization saddled with huge legacy costs like pensions, debt, building maintenance, etc.  After all, their student body population went from 150,000 to 50,000 in only ten years.  This is not an easy change to cope with, and is not something that is easily mock-able as just another “blue state failure,” because the teacher complaints — of dead rats found at public schools, mildew taking over ceilings and walls and damage to school buildings — are real, and there’s just not an easy solution.