School crisis? What crisis?

Read past Politics & Prejudices columns:

Detroit has to fix things last.

You may have forgotten – the media seems to have – but there still is a public school crisis in Detroit. Reform efforts may have been utterly defeated in the presidential campaign, and the Reform Party itself seems to be self-destructing, but reform is still not only badly needed; it is the official ideology of Detroit’s public schools.

Yet efforts to build a future for 175,000 kids is still stalled and in limbo, mainly thanks to Mark Murray, Gov. John "Firewall" Engler’s man on the appointed reform board. Two months ago, the appointed board, which had plowed its way through hundreds of résumés since taking over last spring, thought it had a winner. Tulsa Superintendent John Thompson was the man nearly all thought the ideal candidate to lead the schools over the next five years. "He really made people light up in the interview," Freman Hendrix, the chairman of the board, told me a couple weeks ago. It came down to him and John Harris, a former Atlanta superintendent who had a reputation for both significantly raising test scores and alienating most people around him.

"This was the guy!" Hendrix felt. Others were even more convinced. Yet when the vote came Jan. 18 it was 5 to 1, and the one – Mark Murray – was enough to derail the train. Though Detroit Mayor Dennis Archer selected all but one member of the reform board, the law’s fine print makes it clear that the one – the governor’s man – has veto power, just in case the homies get any funny ideas.

Freman Hendrix, who is also deputy mayor and a large part of the behind-the-scenes reasons for Archer’s success, is politically savvy, but somehow had a hard time seeing Murray’s ploy coming till it was actually happening. Naturally, the governor’s man said it was about test scores, but that was transparent; he had no interest in negotiating.

Naively, Hendrix seems to have thought the bottom line for everyone was actually about saving the schools and the kids, which had been misused as political pawns for years. Things had gotten so bad that there was bipartisan agreement the schools had to be taken over. But exactly why Engler & Co. decided to sabotage the selection is unclear, other than as a way to show all those Democrats and Negroes who’s in charge. (Murray says he never talked to his boss. Good puppets don’t have to.)

That was that. How in the hell, I thought then, are they ever going to get anybody to fill this job? First, there was an apparent likelihood that anyone would be shot down at the end either by the emissary of Satan-oops-Lansing or the Detroiters. Given that, what candidates would voluntarily put themselves through all the stress of applying, public screenings, hearings and grillings, etc., possibly jeopardizing their present jobs – only to set themselves up to be destroyed? Realistically, I was amazed the reform board came up with as good a candidate as Thompson. This isn’t exactly the best and cushiest job in the world. First of all, it happens to be in Detroit, which has a certain non-cachet. Then there is the legacy of past and present political meddling, and the current state of the mess. Temporary CEO David Adamany has done a lot to give whoever comes in a fighting chance, but his report last summer made it perfectly clear the school system, as he found it, resembled a particularly inefficient Third World kleptocracy.

Incidentally, first-rate big-city school superintendents are in short supply, and Detroit is not the only hiring hall. A number of other cities with fewer problems (on paper, anyway) are now also looking for fresh blood.

I was afraid this meant Adamany, Wayne State University’s longtime president, would be more or less permanently strapped to his Detroit school chief’s chair, for another year at least. But in a recent interview, Hendrix said no. "I don’t feel we can ask him to serve beyond the year he agreed to in May," he said. "I really think we can have somebody hired and in place by that time."

How can he expect to do that? He smiled. Times change fast. The good Mr. Murray hadn’t liked the taste of public reaction he’d gotten after his veto. Nor was John Engler as all-powerful as once seemed. The political humiliation of his life came on Feb. 22, when he failed miserably on his promise to deliver Michigan.

Any remaining hope of a job as towel boy in a Bush White House would vanish for sure if the state approaches November with Detroit in turmoil and Democrats vowing ballot-box revenge on the party holding their schools hostage.

What is likely to happen now is one or more candidates – maybe even stealth candidates – will be quietly given assurances they won’t be publicly filleted for partisan pleasure if they seek this job. Only then will the public part of the process start, and then, Hendrix seemed to think, things might move very quickly. They damn sure better. This much is clear. Detroit has to fix the schools, if the city is ever to truly make it. Detroit has to become a place where average parents can depend on the public schools to provide a good education in a safe setting. Whoever makes that happen deserves a statue. Let’s hope we live to see the pigeons.

Jack Lessenberry opines weekly for the Metro Times. You can write Jack Lessenberry c/o this paper or via e-mail.