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Wednesday, August 17, 2016

Aug 16, 2016 Detroit Community Schools: What happened to the info on the old DPS website?

I am conducting research on the Detroit Public Schools and discovered when I type in "Detroit Public Schools," in a search engine, the link takes me to a whole new website: http://detroitk12.org/ for the "Detroit Public Schools Community District." This is the "new" district that Detroit legislators had no voice in when protesting the plan for Detroit Schools. See this June 16, 2016 Free Press article by Rochelle Riley: http://www.freep.com/story/news/columnists/rochelle-riley/2016/06/11/legislators-blocked-voices-detroit-dps-funding-fix/85760366/ Where can a researcher find links to past Detroit Board of Education meetings before, during and after Robert Bobb and other emergency managers took over Detroit Public schools? Must a Freedom of Information Act request be filed? I noticed that most news links or links to information concerning DPS before the new district came into existence appears to be inaccessible...web pages don't exist anymore. As an advocate for parents with students with special needs, I feel parents (myself included) and researchers should have access to information concerning public school board meetings led by members we VOTED for! Last week, I attended a meeting of advocates for persons with disabilities, hosted by Isaac Robinson, at the ARC Detroit office. After speaking with another parent, it appears no one knows what is going to happen with the education of Detroit's students with disabilities in the "community" schools. One concern that other parent advocates and I have is no one knows if a new plan for Special Education has been created. After speaking to parents since June, many were unaware of "community schools" "community" meetings and feel they were left out of most meetings where concerns with Special Education could have been addressed. In essence, the ongoing concerns regarding students with special needs in the "old" and "new" districts, along with EAA schools will remain unaddressed and parents will be silenced as usual until they stand up and start raissing questions concerning the future education of their child or children, and//or begin filing lawsuits again. It seems that filing lawsuits against everyone but the Emergency Manager and the Governor are the only recourse a parent has since the Emergency Manager and the Governor are exempt from legal action, which means most civil rights complaints that name the Governor or Emergency Manager from doing harm to students in the district, will be thrown out. This article from the Democracy Tree, addresses the immunity of Emergency Managers in Michigan: http://www.democracy-tree.com/michigan-house-bills-strip-emergency-managers-immunity/

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