DPS board may sue to keep academic control from Bobb

Marisa Schultz / The Detroit News

Detroit -- The Detroit Public Schools Board of Education will hold a special meeting today to discuss its legal options in preventing emergency financial manager Robert Bobb from taking academic control of the district from the board.

Gov. Jennifer Granholm appointed Bobb in January to handle the deficit-ridden district's finances for a year while the board would oversee academics.

On Friday, Bobb announced he is turning 17 of the district's 22 high schools over to four professional management firms to help boost student achievement and graduation rates.

But Bobb did so without the board's knowledge, according to Carla Scott, the board president.

"That's a sign that you are not interested in working together," she said.

"Not only do you want to be in charge of finances, you want to be in charge of the academic direction, and that's not what the governor assigned him to do."

Filing a lawsuit is one possibility the board is exploring, Scott said. The aim is to solidify the idea that Bobb has control over finances, not academics, she said.

The board adopted its own master academic plan Thursday, and had been waiting for Bobb to begin funding parts of it. Bringing educational management firms to the district was not part of that plan.

On Friday, Granholm's spokeswoman said Bobb is not overstepping his role. Granholm gave him a very difficult job of turning around the district, and he doesn't need to be micromanaged, Liz Boyd said.

Bobb has been given the authority to enter into contracts on the district's behalf, said district spokesman Steve Wasko.

"Mr. Bobb has been clear from Day 1 that it is not possible to fix the finances of the district without also fixing the academics," Wasko said.

"For far too long, and in far too many instances, parents have been speaking loudly and clearly their dissatisfaction with the schools by their movement from the district."

In justifying his decision to choose the companies, Bobb said: "No financial emergency can be solved, realistically and for the long term, built on the back of an academic emergency -- an academic emergency that for far too long has driven ... per-pupil funding from the schools' accounts and driven the entire system into a downward spiral."

The board's attorney, David Olmstead, will advise members on the legality of the multiyear management contracts Bobb entered into with Edison Learning and the Institute for Student Achievement of New York, EdWorks of Cincinnati and Model Secondary Schools Project of Bellevue, Wash.

Olmstead had been trying to negotiate a protocol for Bobb to be in consultation with the board.

"He's required to be in consultation with the board on certain steps he's taking," Olmstead said.

"He doesn't have unilateral control over Detroit Public Schools."

Scott said the board is open to reform and to working with Bobb, but he has shown little interest in partnering with them.

"There's really no reason that Mr. Bobb and the board cannot work together," she said.

mschultz@detnews.com (313) 222-2310