The district’s new superintendent, Derrick Lopez, said in a recent interview with a local television station that the district was in desperate need of help, pointing out that the 28 percent of students who have special education plans was double the state average. He also expressed the need to “actually pay our teachers a living wage.”
The Michigan Legislature’s recently passed budget provides a modest increase in education spending, but lawmakers rejected a proposal by the state’s new Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer, to give additional funding to schools with high concentrations of special education students, like Flint.
State Representative Sheldon Neeley, Democrat of Flint, said the one-time infusion of extra money would be spread across schools in Genesee County.
“Instead of being delivered to us,” he said, “it’s going to be delivered around us.”
As families flee Flint’s schools, money drains away.
Flint’s schools are now in a downward spiral. The district is funded on a per-pupil basis, but it is hemorrhaging students, about 1,000 since 2014, when the crisis began. Two-thirds of children living in Flint are in charter schools or schools run by the Genesee Intermediate School District.
Angy Keelin wanted to stay in Flint Community Schools, where her blind son, Averey, was progressing in a program for visually impaired students, but then it ended abruptly. She said she was forced to follow the program 10 miles from her home to a Genesee County school.
It has not gone smoothly. Last year, she requested an aide after watching her son walk into buildings and almost fall down a flight of stairs. This year, Averey, now in third grade, has been taught by a long-term substitute who cannot teach him to read Braille, as required by his federal education plan, Ms. Keelin said.
The year after Averey was exposed to lead, he had to repeat kindergarten, and Ms. Keelin fears a Michigan law that calls for students to repeat third grade if they are more than one grade level behind in reading. “I don’t want him to be continuously held back,” she said.