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Tag: Bobb

Commission needed

By JGillman, Section News
Posted on Fri Nov 19, 2010 at 07:29:10 AM EST
Tags: Washington, Michigan, Schools, Tobacco Settlement, Money, DPS, Detroit, Bobb (all tags)

You know, one like they have in Washington DC because the 160,000 congressional staffers cannot handle their bosses so well. A couple of old school legislators who might have personally laid the groundwork for the ongoing failures we are seeing.. Except in THIS case, maybe its the legislators and school administrators not handling the school unions.. or SOMETHING so well.

Detroit schools apparently have some gaping holes to fill, and they would like to do it with money that the state doesn't have yet. So to make ALL schools feel like they have failed as badly as the best laid liberal plans in Detroit, they have proposed using $400,000,000.00 in [future] tobacco settlement money to plug a couple hundred million of that leak. From the Detroit news:

Rep. Fred Durhal, D-Detroit, sponsored the legislation in response to a request by Robert Bobb, emergency financial manager of the Detroit Public Schools.
In an interview Monday with The Detroit News Editorial Board, Bobb said the district was asking for money from the state's settlement with tobacco companies to alleviate DPS' $327 million deficit. In return for the aid, DPS and other districts would implement reforms based on the federal Race to the Top initiative.

b-but.. Wouldn't that be 'borrowing'? And isn't a d-deficit against our constitution?

(2 comments, 487 words in story) Full Story

Urban Conservatives Must Create a Knowledge-Based Economy Through Educational Entrepreneurship

By Akindele, Section News
Posted on Fri Mar 26, 2010 at 10:52:13 AM EST
Tags: urban conservative, Michigan, Bobb, Detroit (all tags)

Education is the #1 issue in Michigan. If we do not deal with the educational issue in our communities our state will continue to fall into the abyss.

(3 comments, 2070 words in story) Full Story

A Message To Our Legislators - Beware False Choices

Bigger battles brewing between taxpayers & government-class

By leondrolet, Section News
Posted on Thu Sep 03, 2009 at 11:12:40 AM EST
Tags: Granholm, Dillon, taxes, budget, spending, Bobb, Bing (all tags)

It's happening right now: as tax revenues plummet, the government class is digging in for the battle of their lives to protect their privileged status in Michigan's economy. And politicians are now being forced to take sides with either taxpayers or with public employee unions.

Detroit is in the eye of the storm...

Few government reformers have taken on a more impossible task than Detroit Public Schools Emergency Financial Manager Robert Bobb, who is trying to restore fiscal and functional sanity to the national disgrace that is the Detroit Public Schools. Now, Bobb is being sued by a defiant Detroit School Board determined to protect the status quo that they created and have benefited from.

Kudos to Attorney General Mike Cox, who will defend Bobb against the School Board's retaliatory suit.

Detroit Mayor Bing, meanwhile, is facing a fierce, daily battle with Detroit's unionized city employees, who believe they should be immune from the City's 22% unemployment rate, plummeting population, and evaporating tax base. These unions are more highly compensated than employees in similar cities (according to a Detroit Free Press study), but they won't concede a penny in adjusted benefits or pay.

Meanwhile, in the suburbs...

Has your pay been increasing these last few years? The union representing the professors at Oakland University think that a 10% pay hike over the past three years wasn't good enough. These professors (all public employees paid with your tax dollars) are preparing to strike today. They received raises of between 3% and 3.25% each year since the last contract approval in 2006, but their union isn't satisfied and wants even more.

(2 comments, 821 words in story) Full Story

Liz Boyd versus the all-Dem Detroit Public School Board

By Nick, Section News
Posted on Wed Jul 15, 2009 at 07:31:10 AM EST
Tags: Granholm, Boyd, Bobb, DPS, Union, waste (all tags)

Circle this date on your calendars and remember it well, because these sorts of things tend to happen only once in a lifetime. I'm going to agree with something said by Governor Granholm's spokeswoman, Liz Boyd.

Yesterday while the President was turning a long-planned town hall meeting with Macomb County moms and dads into an invitation only speech for Democratic Party donors and big-wigs about Community Colleges a little dose of that "yes we can" attitude was force-fed into the southeast Michigan atmosphere.

If only it'd filtered south a few miles and made it's way into the D, where Robert Bobb has been waging a one-man war with the entrenched Democratic Party education bureaucracy in an effort to turn around one of the most maligned public school districts in the nation. And the man has been getting things done.

His reward from the all-Dem Detroit Public School board? A lawsuit seeking an injunction to stop him in his tracks. The Detroit News:

"We have no problem working with him, but we have a problem with him working around us, (said board President Carla Scott). You can't do something without discussing it with us. You don't have a right to set the policy."
Last week, Gov. Jennifer Granholm's spokeswoman said Bobb, whom the governor appointed earlier this year, is not overstepping his role with the district. Granholm gave him a very difficult job of turning around the district, and he doesn't need to be micromanaged, Liz Boyd said.

Apparently Ms. Scott and the rest of the board (which voted unanimously to take the man to court) didn't get Ms. Boyd's message. And while I fully understand there is ZERO chance the Governor will actually defend her appointee against elected Democrats in public, at least we've got last week's statement to keep us warm at night.

Not that I wouldn't trade those warm fuzzies for a bit of common sense at DPS. Let the man do his job cleaning up your mess, Madame Chairwoman.

Read on...

(2 comments, 544 words in story) Full Story