LANSING (WKZO-AM/FM) — Gov. Rick Snyder is pushing back any decisions by his School Reform Office on school closures, and wants the SRO to work with.
He has pushed back any announcement of closures for now and appears to want to find a compromise between the School Reform Office and the school districts over school closures. It comes the day after Kalamazoo and Saginaw schools filed suit and after threats from Detroit’s school board that they might do the same.
He is calling on SRO director Natasha Baker to work with State Supt. Brian Whiston to work with the local school officials on new alternatives and to provide more input from the communities.
Snyder has pushed back the deadline for an announcement on any closures to May, but admits in his statement that closures are not a good way to address this problem. He says still some fix will be needed.
The closures were expected to be announced at any time, but have come under blistering criticism from state and local elected officials and the state school board formally voted against them.
We have taken a closer look at the lawsuit filed by Kalamazoo and Saginaw Schools to block the closure of local schools. It claims the Governor acted unconstitutionally when he moved the School Reform Office from the Department of Education to the Department of Management and Budget.
It alleges that the SRO has consistently failed to follow its own procedures for school reforms and improvements and failed to spell out what it wants and what school districts need to do to improve.
They say that unconstitutional vagueness should be another reason to toss it.
It even claims the state violated the Headlee Amendment by failing to fund improvements.
