By ERIC D. LAWRENCE
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER
The Detroit Public Schools and its teachers union said Thursday night that they reached a tentative agreement on a contract that comes as the district strug gles with its finances and declining en rollment.
At a joint news conference, Robert Bobb, the district’s emergency financial manager, called it a “very aggressive agreement with respect to reform,” one that will save the district more than $30 million in expenses in addition to $28 mil lion in health care costs.
He said it will rule out the need for the district to pursue Chapter 9 bankruptcy. The three-year proposed pact calls for a 1% salary increase in the third year. It also allows for additional incentives. And it allows for teacher evaluations and a school-based bonus system.
Members of the Detroit Federation of Teachers are to meet Sunday at Cobo Hall to learn details. Union President Keith Johnson said the goal is to have teachers ratify the pact before they leave for break Dec. 18.
Johnson said negotiations were diffi cult but necessary. “What was happen ing was not sustainable, nor should it have been,” he said.
DPS paid a high cost to move so quickly
But a former official says the price was expected
By CHASTITY PRATT DAWSEY
FREE PRESS EDUCATION WRITER
The Detroit Public Schools had to pay higher costs to construct and remodel fa cilities under the $1.5-billion bond pro gram because deteriorating buildings re quired the district to move quickly, a for mer official testified Thursday.
Robert Moore, the former senior dep uty chief executive officer who was sec ond in command in 2000-05 when the district spent most of the bond that vot ers approved in 1994, testified at a hear ing called by DPS Emergency Financial Manager Robert Bobb.
Additional staff and acceleration costs were factored into the contracts, said Moore, who is now deputy superin tendent for finance operations at the Oakland Intermediate School District.
“Of course, there was a premium to pay for such an accelerated deployment of bond funds which was an unfortunate result of the failure during the prior six years to implement meaningful capital improvement programs,” Moore said.
Since the hearings began in October, Bobb and other DPS officials concluded the district had overpaid by millions — sometimes double appraised values — for land to build the new Cass Tech High, Detroit School of Arts, a maintenance hub near Eastern Market, leased land from the city and space in the Fisher Building.
“We’re going to continue to seek the truth in terms of how these decisions were made,” Bobb said.
No comments:
Post a Comment